McClurken Wiki

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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property ApiMain::$mCommit is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/api/ApiMain.php</b> on line <b>195</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ExplodeIterator::current() should either be compatible with Iterator::current(): mixed, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/StringUtils.php</b> on line <b>571</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ExplodeIterator::next() should either be compatible with Iterator::next(): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/StringUtils.php</b> on line <b>585</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ExplodeIterator::key() should either be compatible with Iterator::key(): mixed, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/StringUtils.php</b> on line <b>578</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ExplodeIterator::valid() should either be compatible with Iterator::valid(): bool, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/StringUtils.php</b> on line <b>603</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ExplodeIterator::rewind() should either be compatible with Iterator::rewind(): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/StringUtils.php</b> on line <b>553</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property LoadBalancer::$mWriteIndex is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/db/LoadBalancer.php</b> on line <b>59</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ResultWrapper::current() should either be compatible with Iterator::current(): mixed, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/db/DatabaseUtility.php</b> on line <b>186</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ResultWrapper::next() should either be compatible with Iterator::next(): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/db/DatabaseUtility.php</b> on line <b>203</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ResultWrapper::key() should either be compatible with Iterator::key(): mixed, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/db/DatabaseUtility.php</b> on line <b>196</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ResultWrapper::valid() should either be compatible with Iterator::valid(): bool, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/db/DatabaseUtility.php</b> on line <b>212</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Return type of ResultWrapper::rewind() should either be compatible with Iterator::rewind(): void, or the #[\ReturnTypeWillChange] attribute should be used to temporarily suppress the notice in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/db/DatabaseUtility.php</b> on line <b>175</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property MessageCache::$mMemc is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/cache/MessageCache.php</b> on line <b>135</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property LoadBalancer::$mWriteIndex is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/db/LoadBalancer.php</b> on line <b>59</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Parser::$mPreprocessorClass is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/parser/Parser.php</b> on line <b>234</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property RequestContext::$recursion is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/context/RequestContext.php</b> on line <b>292</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property PPDStack::$accum is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php</b> on line <b>755</b><br />
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<b>Warning</b>:  preg_match(): Compilation failed: subpattern name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/MagicWord.php</b> on line <b>907</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Using ${var} in strings is deprecated, use {$var} instead in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Pager.php</b> on line <b>908</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property ContribsPager::$contribs is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/specials/SpecialContributions.php</b> on line <b>627</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property ContribsPager::$tagFilter is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/specials/SpecialContributions.php</b> on line <b>629</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property ContribsPager::$nsInvert is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/specials/SpecialContributions.php</b> on line <b>630</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property ContribsPager::$associated is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/specials/SpecialContributions.php</b> on line <b>631</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property ContribsPager::$deletedOnly is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/specials/SpecialContributions.php</b> on line <b>633</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property ContribsPager::$topOnly is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/specials/SpecialContributions.php</b> on line <b>634</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContentHandler::$mModelName is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/ContentHandler.php</b> on line <b>402</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mUnpatrolled is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>661</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property WikitextContent::$mText is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/content/TextContent.php</b> on line <b>51</b><br />
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<b>Deprecated</b>:  Creation of dynamic property Revision::$mTextId is deprecated in <b>/home/umwhisto/public_html/mcclurken/wiki/includes/Revision.php</b> on line <b>505</b><br />
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		<title>328 2010--Week 14 Questions/Comments</title>
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				<updated>2010-04-22T06:07:10Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* The Voice of the an Anorexic, Abra Fortune Chernik, 1995 */&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;== Susan Eisenberg, Hard-Hatted Women ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I like the comparison Susan Eisenberg made on page 279 when she says, “Entering construction in the late 1970s was a little like falling in love with someone who you weren’t supposed to.” It seems that the problem for these women was not enjoying the job, but the hostility they faced from men and the fear they had of what the men would think of things such as pregnancy. It is good that these women had each other to lean on and form close bonds. I would guess that the majority of them would not have lasted if they didn’t have these strong connections to other women. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I agree with Erin on her post. It is great that these women had a community of a few other women who were going through the same things to motivate and identify with each other. Many women did not have that in the work place. I found it interesting when Eisenberg talked about working up until being about 6 months pregnant. Her friends outside of work couldn’t conceive (no pun intended) of the notion that people wouldn’t notice that she was pregnant, but as she said “no one expected to see a pregnant woman on a construction site”(280) so they didn’t see it at all under her baggy work cloths. She also presented herself as “she always had” (280) so they really didn’t see a difference.  What I found to be sad was her experience on the work-site with the banter that the men had with each other. While they were joking about beating their wives and other assorted misogynistic things, she was quietly crying to herself in private. It is unfortunate because I feel like that still goes on. When I used to work in restaurants that banter was certainly happening behind the scenes which made many female co-workers uncomfortable. The difference now is that we are able to speak out against and potentially have action taken whereas Eisenberg really felt that  had no power to do so in her position and industry. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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I also agree with Erin and Caryn. It like how the women formed a support network amongst each other when working with the crass men became too much for any one of them to bear alone. However, I also found it interesting how the women didn&amp;#039;t just get support from other &amp;quot;hard hatted&amp;quot; women, but from all women in general. Eisenberg talks about how she ran into women who wished they had led the lifestyle she had and who constantly encouraged her to keep going when things got tough. I think this really illustrates the &amp;quot;sisterhood&amp;quot; aspect of the women&amp;#039;s lib movement. Women of different backgrounds rallied behind Eisenberg and her peers to make sure they had the support and the opportunity that they needed to keep going. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin, that line describes her passion in being a journeywoman. I found her experiences with combining her position and her pregnancy most moving.  Pregnancy is an emotional and delicate process that a woman goes through.   Pregnancy combined with feeling that co-workers would look at you differently and change the dynamics of work if they knew of the pregnancy.  It is understandable why she didn’t tell them until later in her pregnancy.  She did not want her co-workers to think she couldn‘t do her job any less than them.  She was dealing with a lot of opposition in a field so new to women.  As I read this piece, I got a sense of the enormous pressure she had on her and how it would be natural for her to draw strength from other women in the field.  -Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin and Mhimes, in respect to the passion Eisenberg felt for her job and her willingness to conceal her pregnancy. The line that grabbed my attention was when she stated, &amp;quot;Not talking about my pregnancy exaggerated the feeling I often have in construction of feeling split in two&amp;quot; (281). I think this piece really shows how women, like Eisenberg, felt as though they had to hide their pregnancy because they feared ridicule, or job loss.  I think these are very real, articulated fears, because it was common for women in the past to be let go from jobs when pregnant or married.   I enjoyed Eisenberg&amp;#039;s perseverance as a working mother and how she was able to form a good relationship with her male co-workers who actually accepted her as a working woman and a mother.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed reading this piece about a woman who became an electrician. I thought it was really neat to read about how much she loved her blue-collar job. Working in this type of occupation which was a predominantly male field must have been pretty hard at times. Thankfully women had the support of other women. Pregnancy was definitely an issue for these women especially because of their higher risk of miscarriages. I can&amp;#039;t imagine having to do certain tasks and do labor intensive work while being pregnant. The idea of miscarrying must have also led to increase stress. These women were brave and strong women for working these kinds of jobs alongside men and also being pregnant and/or mothers at the same time. -avanness&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Anna and the “sisterhood” ideal of the women liberation movement. I think that it was really important for women to have each other while they were breaking into something that was seen as entirely male. Anyone doing something out of the ordinary would need that support system, especially from her peers. I doubt that Susan would have done and gone as far as she did without her female supporters. Obviously the men on the job weren’t very supportive, of course there is always the exception, but from what Susan describes it seems like most were unsupportive.  “The journeymen were extremely hostile and unwilling to train me,” (279). About the pregnancy I would be really reluctant to speak anything about it as well. Especially after hearing what the men talk about on a day-to-day basis, “jokes about beating up wives, racist and anti-Semitic slurs, degrading remarks about each other’s girlfriends or some women who happened to pass by,” (280). If I heard those remarks every day, even being a strong woman who broke into a new field, I would be worried for myself too. Susan is still a woman and men are still going to be stronger than her no matter what profession she is in. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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The most important thing that kept these women going, despite the difficult working conditions was the camaraderie among these women and without this, working in construction and life would of been more difficult.  The higher graduation rate in the trade school was &amp;quot;owed largely to the support, information-sharing and prodding [they] gave each other&amp;quot; (278).  They also formed groups for personal support and to discuss the varied problems they faced on the job-site.  It seems when times are desperate, women have constantly bonded together to acheive a goal weather it be the right to vote, or just gaining respect and fitting in on a constuction site.  They have an immense sense of pride in what they accomplish and this is demonstrated at the end of this excerpt where an older Eisenberg drove around showing her daughter the buildings she had a part in. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I always pay vague attention when I pass by construction work. The reading said that before the 1970s construction related work was dominated almost one hundred percent by white males. And that number is still high if the sites I see are anything to go by, though I think there are many non-white men entering the field, particularly Hispanics. Last week, when I went by the Eagle Village construction, I actually saw a woman walking amongst the men. One woman. I actually looked for more because I was so surprised (and almost confused a long haired man in a ponytail with woman but that’s another story). I almost did want to cheer her like some women did for Eisenberg. The field seems to be becoming more ethnically diverse, but it’s nowhere near becoming more sexually diverse. I can only recall seeing about two or three women doing construction in most of my lifetime. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked this piece, although I was a little surprised by the level of vulgarity the male construction workers displayed.  I know the stereotypical image of the male construction worker is a sex crazed pig with low levels of manners, but I was actually shocked by the comment the one man made about raping all of the old women in the nursing home.  That was beyond the pale, but I wondered if it was said more for shock value than for anything else.  EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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== Connaught C. Marshner Explains What Social Conservatives Really Want, 1988 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is great because I have always wanted to know what social conservatives really want =) On a serious note, I think the reason I like this so much is because it was written in 1988 and these are arguments that I have personally heard people make. Honestly, what I really got out of this article was how hard it is to study and interpret history that is so recent because it really is difficult to separate your own feelings from the facts. I think it is important to see where one side is coming from, and even though I hate to admit it, I think that social conservatives, as described in this article, have some valid points (though they are few and far between). For example, women who choose to stay at home should get more credit in forms of tax breaks. &lt;br /&gt;
On a side note -- I am curious about whom the audience of this article was intended to be and if they were trying to sway opinions in any particular way. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Just to respond to Erin, I agree completely that it really is hard to separate your own feelings especially when the &amp;quot;history&amp;quot; you are looking at is barely 2 decades old.  History gets interpreted and reinterpreted countless times since the moment an event occurs, so the closer it is to modern times and your own personal ideals, the more difficult it is took look through the historian&amp;#039;s lens. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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==Jamala McFadden Tells Her Story of Welfare Assistance in the 1990s, 2002==&lt;br /&gt;
Jamala McFadden&amp;#039;s story was very inspiring to me. She was pregnant at 15, which probably made it seem like her life was over. Instead, Jamala made the best out of the situation and worked extremely hard to prove everyone wrong. Many times, I think people assume that other people on welfare don&amp;#039;t deserve it or use it for the wrong reasons. Jamala was not one of those people. She attended college and was almost a 4.0 student, took care of her son, and had a job all at the same time. I can only imagine how rewarding it was when she finished law school. It was interesting that there was not any type of childcare service for the university. I&amp;#039;m not sure if that was something that was normal at large universities, but I feel like childcare should have been offered. I think it is admirable of those single parents who have children to go out and get an education. By not having childcare services, I feel like that is a disservice to women, and it is also discouraging them from reaching their full potential. Lack of childcare, whether it be in the workplace or at universities, is wrong because it inhibits women from being successful. Why restrict someone who is trying to better their own life? In my opinion, the welfare money Jamala McFadden used throughout her life was paid back to society through her amazing successes. --- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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The show 16 &amp;amp; Pregnant , which runs on MTV, follows the lives of teen moms who all initially come to the conclusion that their lives are over (at least as they know it.) I think if those girls were able to read about Jamala they would have a role model to look to because of her ambition and her desire to achieve despite the obstacles. She is the type of person, not just the type of woman, who demonstrates that people are sometimes the victim of their circumstances, and not passive bystanders. She worked so hard to attain her education and took care of her son by working as well as caring for him. Had she had childcare available, it may have been a slight relief for her and a small decrease in her daily pressure. Even today there are places of employment where childcare is not openly available, however I have heard of some community colleges providing childcare so that single mothers can get their education which I feel is an important service to offer and a true benefit that will allow more single parents to gain the education needed to support their child (children). –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Jamala&amp;#039;s story was definitely an inspiring one and one you do not hear everyday.  Like Jmarshal, I thought about that darn MTV show as well while I was reading this.  While those moms are mostly lost young ladies, Jamala shows that even under not the most ideal circumstances, one can persevere and achieve a high set of goals. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Real &amp;quot;Norma Rae&amp;quot; Tells Her Story, Crystal Lee Sutton ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The Real “Norma Rae” was interesting. Sutton seemed to fall into union activity, but proved to be quite brave in the end. She really stuck to her guns throughout this piece. I was not entirely surprised when the Mill forbid the copying the “What the Company Will Do for You”. That doesn’t seem legal but it was a brave thing for Sutton to copy that letter for the National Labor Relations Board. I think that this empowerment allowed Sutton to really make a difference at this mill. She would not give up the fight even at the very end when she got fired and removed from the premises, “I was trying to get back in. I was fighting.” (277)  It’s amazing how, in such a short time, she was educated and indoctrinated into the labor movement. – Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece almost reminded me of the interview I did for the paper.  My interviewee&amp;#039;s father did not agree with what Unions were doing at the time and forbade her to join them, just like Suttons mother and sister did.  &amp;quot;[They] didn&amp;#039;t think I ought to go&amp;quot; (274).  However, unlike my interviewee, Sutton eventually fell into the Unions and I think the main reason was opportunity.  Sutton did not have too much of this in the south and the workings conditions were not very favorable.  Also, the economic status was most likely worse than my interviewee who was upper middle class.  Sutton was almost certainly a lower class than this and in the south she had fewer options and was therefore forced into the Unions.  This excerpt shows that economic status and location growing up definately contribute to opportunities for women. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Caryn, I really liked Sutton&amp;#039;s determination. She literally did everything she could to get that letter. I also liked how she knew that it was more important to get the plant unionized than for her to keep her job. She gave up her own livelihood for the greater good of the factory workers, which is really admirable. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Norma Rae was an interesting piece.  Most intriguing was when she looked around and thought to herself as the boss was lying about what she’d been doing trying to find reasons to fire her [talking on the phone, hanging out in the bathroom, etc] that no one stood up for her, not even ones that had picnics together.  Of course these people were afraid of loosing their jobs but that’s what the boss men expected -to use that fear to prevent them from creating or joining unions.  Norma Rae stood up even though her knees were shaky and it wasn’t in her plan for the day, she did it.  A lot of the readings this week were about women standing up.  When they stood up, they set a precedent… if she made it, so can I!  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Crystal Lee Sutton was a very brave and determined woman. She took risks because she knew what was right. Two things that I thought was interesting in this piece were the fact that after she was fired in 1973, no one would hire her until 1978. That is a long time she went without work and it shows how much employers and businesses really disliked unions and union activity. The other thing that was interesting was the fact that the plant didn&amp;#039;t sign the union contract until 1989, almost six years after the union won an election at the plant. Again, people were very determined to keep unions out of plants and their businesses. -Avanness&lt;br /&gt;
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Crystal Lee Sutton was a powerful woman for her time and wanted to challenge the norms of male/corporate superiority. The line that struck was when Sutton was at the factory for dinner and the union organizer was pressuring her to get the letter off the bulletin board. When Eli said, &amp;quot;Look, Crystal, you can afford to lose a few pounds and I need that letter.&amp;quot;(275). Was this a normal tactic used by men to get women to help the union effort? I am pretty sure it is an unwritten rule that you never call a woman fat, yet did it accomplish what Eli wanted? I think he may have said that to get the rise out of her, it would out of me but probably in retailiation against him, and it ultimately led to her being released from the company but it was a powerful move to challenge the head of corporations and I commend her for it. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women on Welfare, Johnnie Tillmon, 1972==&lt;br /&gt;
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First, let me just say that I love Mrs. Tillmon. Second, I would hate to be on welfare and I hope I will never have to deal with it and by reading this piece I really felt for Mrs. Tillmon. It really helped me to see a different side of being on welfare. I see that we as a society have always looked down on those who resort to the use of welfare because we tend to think of them as inhuman. “In this country, if your any one of those things-poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare-you count less as a human being,” (268).  We see such people as taking our money because they are too lazy to work, but who are we to place such stereotypes upon these people? We just assume things having never experienced them and I see that we tend to believe what the politicians say as welfare being a “cancer eating at our vitals,” (287). We never see the people as mothers or children, just poor people taking away more of our money, aliens to the little world we live in. I’ll admit that I thought that same before because I’ve never had to deal with it. I like that Mrs. Tillmon comes up with a solution though and a smart one at that: “I’d start paying women a living wage for doing the work we are already doing-child-raising and housekeeping,” (289). This way the welfare crisis would be over and housewives wouldn’t be looked down upon either. We’ve spoken of working women as being more outgoing and not seen as “true women” either. Wouldn’t that all fix itself as women got paid for their domestic work in their house? I think we would be respected more and have more opportunities. I would definitely be rich by now. =) -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what Morgan has stated.  It is clear from this piece that being on welfare automatically labels a person with a negative stereotype. I think that this piece shows the difficulty that women have raising a family as a single mother, especially since the A.F.D.C, in most cases, prohibited a male in the household in order to qualify.  The part that stuck out to me was Tillmon&amp;#039;s distinction between &amp;#039;&amp;#039;a&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;the&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man.  She showed how the government was, in essence, controlling women who accepted this welfare.  Her line, &amp;quot;The truth is that A.F.D.C  is like a supersexist marriage.  You trade in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;a&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man for &amp;#039;&amp;#039;the&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man&amp;quot; (287).  It seems like these women who have no other options, but to be on welfare because they do not make enough money to support themselves and their children, have to loose a part of their sexuality as a consequence.  This statement really grabbed me when Tillmon states,  &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s one good thing about welfare.  It kills your illusions about yourself, and about where this society is really at...You have to learn to fight, to be aggressive, or you just don&amp;#039;t make it.  If you can survive being on welfare, you can survive anything&amp;quot; (289).  If this doesn&amp;#039;t read like empowerment, I&amp;#039;m not sure what else does.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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What I noticed most about this article was that it was published in 1972 yet it appears (by Morgan&amp;#039;s and Abratchi&amp;#039;s comments) that I am not the only one who forgot this while I was reading it. It doesn&amp;#039;t say a lot for the improvement of the welfare system in this country when a statement like &amp;quot;In this country if you&amp;#039;re any one of those things--poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare- you count less as a human being. If you&amp;#039;re all those things you don&amp;#039;t count at all except as a statistic.&amp;quot; ( page 286) is still just as relevant in today&amp;#039;s society. I cant even count how many times I personally have had to remind people that most of the people in this country on welfare are children, and that the fat, lazy, unemployed story they like to bring up so often is not the norm. I hope that 38 years from now someone doesn&amp;#039;t read a testimonial of today&amp;#039;s Johnnie Tillmon and think the same exact thing as I have.... -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I too thought there were similarities between 1972 and today when reading this article. When Johnnie Tillmon points out that &amp;quot;the truth is a job doesn&amp;#039;t necessarily mean an adequate income&amp;quot; (pg. 288) she could be talking about today, especially for women. We talked about the wage gap in class a bit yesterday, but it was fitting because yesterday was actually Equal Pay Day. With the current wage gap, women who worked for all of 2009 had to work until April 20, 2010 to earn the same amount that men made in 2009 alone. That illustrates how significant a problem pay differences are today, and they were worse for women like Tillmon trying to support their families. -Mary Ann &lt;br /&gt;
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==Sex and Sports, Mariah Burton Nelson, 1994==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article highlights the transition Nelson was forced to make from the community she found as a young woman where she felt free and empowered to celebrate herself and express herself as a lesbian, to the &amp;quot;real world&amp;quot; where she was forced to choose between being open about her homosexuality or continue playing professional basketball.  I couldn&amp;#039;t believe they sent the women on the California team to charm school in order to &amp;quot;portray a feminine (that is, heterosexual) image.&amp;quot; [311]  The focus on this transition effectively illustrates the societal stifling of those perceived to be different, particularly those who challenge socially-encouraged gender roles.  This transition is reflected in a sort of reverse in the following account &amp;quot;La Mujer,&amp;quot; where the writer finds her individuality and strength when she is finally able to explore her identity after a stifling adolescence.  -Erin B. &lt;br /&gt;
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My grandmother had to play half court basketball in a skirt when she was in school, so the fact that women had a professional basketball league at all was a huge step up. But men still resented and feared women&amp;#039;s entrance into the realm of professional sports. Nelson&amp;#039;s coach called the team girls so that he didn&amp;#039;t have to take them seriously as adults (and perhaps so that they themselves would be fooled into thinking they didn&amp;#039;t deserve to be treated as equals). Maybe these men thought that women playing sports would somehow take away from men sports, that if women could be strong and talented enough to play basketball that the men playing the same sport would lose their legitimacy somehow. After all, if a &amp;quot;girl&amp;quot; could do it, then what was so special about them? -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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While I don&amp;#039;t like how the Pioneers coach treated his players, I think he is right when saying that sports is a business.  I think there are a lot of interesting debates that revolve around this topic.  I would assume that the reason more men&amp;#039;s college sports are shown on television is because more people watch them, which means more money can be made on advertising.  Is it then unreasonable to spend more money on a program that makes more money for the college?  Also, I believe in most professional sports there is something like the personal conduct policy that the NFL has, which states that players have to avoid &amp;quot;conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the National Football League&amp;quot; (http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/21598/nfl-personal-conduct-policy).  I don&amp;#039;t think it is right that Nelson got fired for making an appearance at Gay Pride Day, but it probably has more to do with money than what&amp;#039;s wrong or right.   My guess is that Pioneers did not want an openly gay woman on the team because they felt that it would change their image to a point where they would lose fans and therefore lose money.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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==The Voice of the an Anorexic, Abra Fortune Chernik, 1995==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article scared and gave hope to me. Of course I’ve heard of anorexic and I’ve seen it, but I’ve never felt the pain like I did in reading Mrs. Chernik’s first-hand account. But through all of the pain of eating and binging she persevered through it and that was what really got through to me. Instead of beating herself up for being anorexic and not being able to fix it, she found what was wrong with society and how they saw her as a woman. As women we try to live up to unrealistic standards thinking that that is what men want and what other women will be jealous of. It’s what society has done to us, it’s damaged us. Mrs. Chernick finally broke through this when she saw herself and “observed a woman held up by her culture as the physical ideal because she was starving, self-obsessed, and powerless, a women called beautiful because she threatened no one except herself,” (323) . Women are not suppose to be powerful and dominate of themselves, that’s what were told. Men are to be the superior and made to feel that way; maybe that is why they seem so confident in their bodies. “As long as society resists female power, fashion will call healthy women physically flawed,” (324). If only we could all learn to be “based on an image of a women warrior,” (324) and be happy as ourselves. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I personally was touched by the article because even me and my sister have had a running joke that any girl who hasn&amp;#039;t had an eating disorder has just failed at having one. Although it&amp;#039;s just a joke and neither of us are really serious about it, it still would better for a girls self esteem  to be a &amp;quot;size&amp;quot; 00 and never have to worry about anything like eating ever again than to be fat and ridiculed for the rest of your life. It sucks, but its&amp;#039; true. I felt most touched, (and most appalled by the society that I live in), by the statement &amp;quot;Gazing in the mirror at my emaciated body, I observed a woman held upby her culture as the physcial ideal because she was starving, self obsessed and powerless, a women called beautiful because she threatened no one except herself. Despite my intelligence, my education and my supposed manhattan sophistication I had believed all of the lies; I had almost given my life in order to achieve the sickly impotence that tis culture aggressively links with female happiness, love and success&amp;quot; (page 323-324). WHY is this? I don&amp;#039;t understand how a male who isn&amp;#039;t exactly the fittest of the fit can walk around without a shirt on (because it&amp;#039;s hot) and have no qualms about the fact that his beer belly is hanging out, but most of my girl friends won&amp;#039;t run outside in a sports bra because of the self consciousness attached with being shirtless (and because it substantially increases the amount of people who think it&amp;#039;s okay to yell, holler, whistle and even take pictures of you.). It doesn&amp;#039;t make sense. I&amp;#039;m not saying that the man should be self-conscious but at the same time. It&amp;#039;s a ridiculous double standard that leads to terrible diseases and someone almost killing themselves to never be skinny enough. I consecutively run for at least an hour every day of my life, and I barely fit into society&amp;#039;s standard for clothing sizes. Beauty isn&amp;#039;t an eating disorder, or at least if it is, can there not be a double standard about it?  --Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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This was a ridiculously moving account of an extremely common issue.  The help that she got was exceptional as well and, sadly, most girls don&amp;#039;t get this kind of treatment.  I worked in emotional and behavioral facilities for close to two years and saw girls like this all the time.  A couple of the women i met didn&amp;#039;t make it.  Chernik articulates a lot of the pathology behind this disease powerfully.  &amp;quot;I had reduced my world to a plate of steamed carrots, and over this tiny kingdom I proudly crowned myself queen.&amp;quot; [322] This passage illustrated her desire to shrink (and ultimately disappear) not just in size, but in character, in personality and strength.  The writer uses the word &amp;quot;impotence&amp;quot; to describe the effects of the disease, which struck me as a powerful characterization.  The social significance of the prevalence of this disorder can&amp;#039;t be understated.  I&amp;#039;m sure I can&amp;#039;t speak for all women, but I&amp;#039;d guess that a lot of the females who read this can identify (or could in the past) with some of the mentality associated with an unhealthy body image.  The praise that she received was the scariest part.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that the praise is the scariest part--it&amp;#039;s what keeps fueling Chernik&amp;#039;s delusions--and it comes from all sides (not only the random strangers, but also her friends and family). The most chilling part of her essay, for me, is when she has her body fat tested, is found to be severely underweight, and is outright congratulated, and even rewarded, for her unhealthiness. That&amp;#039;s the turning point in her story, when she realizes that anorexia is not really about controlling her body/life, but really society controlling her. I think the pathology here is very very interesting, and that more women and girls need to read this essay, to see what it&amp;#039;s really like to be a full-fledged anorexic, that it is an out-of-control disease and not glamorous at all. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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This article really struck me, as three of my friends have struggled with anorexia.  One of them is a guy, so I do not want us to forget that body image is not only something women struggle with.  However, I think it is safe to say that it is a much more pronounced problem for women. One of the most striking things about this piece is the societal idea that the most beautiful women are those “who resemble little girls.”  This idea caused Chernik to reject the changes puberty wrought in her rather than embrace them, and this is incredibly sad to me.  And these societal perceptions of beauty are a much more amorphous thing to fight against than unequal wages or something similar, as the government can only enact so many laws against the media without abridging the right to free speech, and it certainly can’t command people to change their minds about beauty.  Hopefully, as more women like Chernik who have struggled with eating disorders become more outspoken about their experiences, change will come.  – Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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It just struck me that it&amp;#039;s important to remember that when we say &amp;quot;society,&amp;quot; we mean both men AND women. As much as it&amp;#039;s sometimes easier (from a woman&amp;#039;s perspective) to point the finger at the &amp;quot;patriarchy&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;gendered media&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;male chauvinist pigs&amp;quot; as the parties responsible for the objectification of women as sex objects, and therefore lay down a standard of beauty/appearance (and consequently weight), I have to remind myself that we as women do more than our fair share of reinforcing these beauty myths. In reality, our willingness to follow beauty trends and subject ourselves to what boils down to self-torture in pursuit of an unreachable ideal, and our willingness to expect and encourage our friends to do the same, keeps the flawed expectations at status quo. Thoughts? --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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Just like everyone above me, I was very moved and upset by this piece. I nearly lost two of my best friends to anorexia, and reading Chernik&amp;#039;s words really resonated with their stories. I think there is something very valid and absolutely true in the media forcing lanky, thin women on us as the ideal. It is an ideal that most cannot live up to and for some leads to this horrible disease or its sister, bulimia. However, I think there is also something for individuals who may fit society&amp;#039;s ideal, and brought to anorexia in an effort to try and maintain it. Like Sarah mentioned, her family, her friends, complete strangers complimented her on her emaciation. I think as a discussion it should not be about &amp;quot;real women have curves&amp;quot; or being a 00, because there are women who are naturally 00 and are not voluptuous. I feel it should be a discussion of health, not of a size, because otherwise we are just perpetuating it. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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As a female college student I think this article really strikes home in a lot of places. I lived in Virginia Hall (all girls!) my freshman year and the amount of eating disorders  and body issues that I was confronted with in that environment was a frightening and eye opening experience. I think this article really delved into the psychological roots of anorexia as well as the societal pressures that manifest themselves in young girls. But I think that confessions such as these as well has others has made it easier for women to speak out about anorexia and bulimia today because of how well known a disease it is, and hopefully someday its notoriety will help diminish this epidemic. -Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==Organizing the Farm Workers, Jessie Lopez De La Cruz==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article made me believe in not only the union fight but the power women could have in the union struggle. The line that clearly stood out to me was, &amp;quot;It doesn&amp;#039;t take courage. All it takes is standing up for what you believe in,...&amp;quot;(285). Jessie did not want to be known as courageous, as someone who should be idiolzed but she was, for a woman to step outside societal norms and challenge practices was not common. She just wanted people to come together and fight for what they deserved and the help she had from the nurse to enter Parlier proved that many people felt the same and just wanted to see a good outcome.-Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I saw a lot of parallels between these Mexican American women organizing the farm workers and the African American women involved in the black civil rights movement. Both faced intense discrimination from the men within their own movements. Even though these women worked side by side with men in the fields, the men still didn&amp;#039;t believe they should be involved in political action. Yet the farm workers at least had the support of Cesar Chavez who specifically sought out women activists, something the black civil rights workers did not have. Chavez seems to have been very forward thinking in his refusal to allow traditional Mexican American dynamics to keep women in the home and away from organizing, something that I&amp;#039;m sure helped his movement greatly. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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==Date Rape: Hysteria or Epidemic? Katie Roiphe==&lt;br /&gt;
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Although when I first started reading this piece I thought that Roiphe was making some streched claims, she did bring up a lot of great points.  I think her willingness to show that the issue of &amp;quot;date rape&amp;quot; actually produces a negative view on women is interesting.  She believes that &amp;quot;date rape&amp;quot; victimizes women and labels women as incapable of being sensual beings.  I thought this was interesting because a lot of women in the feminist movement (first and second) were trying to move away from this Victorian stereotype of women being pure and pious.  Roiphe shows that this date rape movement is actually, in some ways, harking back to this old ideal that rejects women as sexual beings.  Roiphe is instead promoting that women take responsibility for their own actions and not subject themselves to this stereotype and to not be afraid to be sexual.   -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I am still unsure how I feel about this article. I have known people who have come extremely close to being date raped (luckily they had a friend or two that recognized what had happened and came to their aide) and to think that at any point it could be swept away as “hysteria” is hard to understand. From other classes I have taken, it is more common for women to be characterized as “hysterical” (a long time ago women were called hysterical when they menstruated or had severe mood swings due to PMS, now it is more understood and while the term hysterical is still used today, it still almost always refers to women. Just a random tid-bit of information) than men and the actions taken against women falls the same way.  I think there is a difference between being sexual and consenting to sex, saying that a girl does not take responsibility for “date-rape” is almost saying the same thing as “she was asking for it” by wearing a certain outfit. I do agree with CBrau that today the term “rape” is used much too loosely and has as a result made the idea of rape less common (the shock value is not as high as it was when the term first came into use).—jmarshal  &lt;br /&gt;
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I&amp;#039;m glad I am not the only one who finished the article and was unsure of how to feel! I am tempted to agree with some of the statements Roiphe is making but at the same time I feel like it might be insensitive of me as a woman to agree with a statement that in someways minimizes such a serious issue. So conflicted! However while some of Roiphe&amp;#039;s statements were completely valid especially her comparisons of &amp;quot;date rape pamphlets to victorian guides to conduct&amp;quot; (340) I think it is better to exaggerate an issue rather than minimize and have women be more over cautious as opposed to careless, as long as the severity and weight of the word rape is understood. Rape has become too easy of a word for people to say (for example has anyone else ever heard someone jokingly use the expression &amp;quot;end rape say yes&amp;quot;) do we really live in a society where that is ok???? --Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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I would have to agree with Roiphe that when it comes to rape, some people really do go overboard with it.  It is of course a very serious issue, but I at least agree with her irritation with women who are suspcious of all their male friends.  Those poor guys!  And rape including including more than the physical act (i.e. verbal coercion)?  I think this warping of the definition can be likened to how the seriousness of rape is really downplayed in our culture today.  People have it in their every day vocabulary (it&amp;#039;s a commonly used internet and gaming term) and many people still don&amp;#039;t realize just how traumatizing rape can be (not to mention, some people don&amp;#039;t seem to treat it like the crime it is!).  I am just wondering how we went from one extreme to the other; from hysteria to disinterest?  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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This date rape article reminded me of a much more recent article in today&amp;#039;s news.  Alex Knepper, a student columnist from American University, recently wrote an article saying, &amp;quot;Any woman who heads to a party, drinks five cups of jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex.&amp;quot; This has sense triggered tons of controversy,  placing the definition date rape into debate.  Although it is possible there could be some truth of his statement, it still a very sensitive topic to suggest ANY woman who behaves this way &amp;quot;wants sex.&amp;quot; -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
 Here is a direct link to the article http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/02/earlyshow/main6357129.shtml&lt;br /&gt;
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I think what&amp;#039;s most problematic about this article is that while Roiphe does point out that the term rape is perhaps too broad, she does not give a specific enough example of where exactly to draw the line. I agree that it&amp;#039;s become a sort of blanket term for a wide variety of unwanted sexual advances, and sometimes is applied even more arbitrarily (CBrau:  One day while playing Call of Duty my teenage brother used the phrase &amp;quot;I totally raped him&amp;quot; (referring to an opposing player). Last time that ever happened, believe you me.) While it&amp;#039;s true that what we consider date rape does occur (far more often than we know), we need to remember that remorse after the fact ALONE does not make it okay to call rape. Whoever does the sitting down and defining of terms needs to reevaluate the criteria for something being called &amp;quot;rape.&amp;quot; --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women and Disabilities, Nancy Mairs==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article I found to be empowering for anyone who has a degenerative disease, they know they are not alone and while a cure would be ideal, they can survive and still enjoy life. The one issue I had with the article was when she discussed the use of the word, &amp;quot;cripple&amp;quot; and said, &amp;quot;[people]-wince at the word &amp;#039;&amp;#039;cripple&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, as they do not at handicapped or disabled.&amp;quot;(317). I do not think that is true, as someone who has personal experience with a disabled person I know they are still looked at differently when the word disabled is brought up, or someone notices their license plate with disabled tags, and people make comments. No matter how a person is classified as crippled, disabled, or handicapped there is always an ignorant person who will make a remark, but people like Nancy make the best of it. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Megan, I was so uplifted by and impressed with Nancy Mairs&amp;#039; strength, courage and humor, maybe not despite her disbility but because of it. Mairs empahsizes that her MS is no who she is, it does not define her. She is a person living with MS, not a victim of it. However, at the same time, she acknowledges her disability and how it has helped shape her into a fierce and stalwart person. That balance is key is Nancy Mairs&amp;#039; ability to live with and push through her disability. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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==Lindsy Van Gelder Reports on the &amp;quot;World Series of Sex-Discrimination Suits,&amp;quot; 1978==&lt;br /&gt;
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The idea of reverse discrimination against men is something I find quite interesting. Affirmative action programs were not meant to push men out, but were intended to give women a fair chance. I just think men felt threatened by the idea of women working at an equal level with them. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe the disparity between men and women&amp;#039;s pay, such as this woman: &amp;quot;whose annual salary was $2500 less than that of the average male in the &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Times&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Washington bureau.&amp;quot; (P. 464) What astounded me was that one woman was more than qualified for a job, but was passed up for it multiple times, with the job going to men. The article stated, &amp;quot;sexism does indeed exist there, but in a genteel form in keeping with the overall tone of the paper.&amp;quot; (P. 465) So does that make sexism okay? That it is only a &amp;quot;genteel form&amp;quot; that goes along with what the paper wants? Another thing I was shocked at and didn&amp;#039;t understand was when the executive was talking about how he should hire the woman who was overqualified for the job. He said, &amp;quot;If she weren&amp;#039;t a woman, she&amp;#039;d be in the bullpen right now!&amp;quot; (P. 465) Why didn&amp;#039;t he just hire her? I think it was more about what was socially acceptable at the time as well as maybe his reputation? Whatever the reason, it amazes me at how restricting social norms could be, to both men and women. The worst part about this entire suit that these women of the Post brought to court is that even if the case was argued well in court, what is the most progress the women would have made...what would they have achieved? Even if they won, it would be difficult to actually institute change in that particular workplace, which is probably what kept many women from suing.. they knew it would become a dead end. --Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== A Day in the Kitchen (photograph) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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When I saw this picture, I immediately had the thought that this woman is proud of her job.  Just the way that she carries herself and her facial expression, she seems to take great pride in her work.  And yet, we have to ask ourselves at least two things.  Has she been posed?  And is she actually happy with what she is doing?  Her expression seems genuine, but maybe she is a woman that makes the best out of what she has.  Perhaps if she had the option to become a chef or not, she would not have.  It could only be through society&amp;#039;s limited career options for blacks that she became a chef.  And in the caption, it is implied that even though African American women have held jobs longer than white women, they are still discriminated against and pushed aside by those lesser experienced white women.  This certainly makes one think.  Do employers really look at skill?  Or are they still blindsided by prejudices?  They probably were when this photo was taken (1976).  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I really like &amp;quot;A Day in the Kitchen.&amp;quot; This woman just looks proud and happy. Velma James, a head chef, seems to be the queen of her kitchen.  It&amp;#039;s unfortunate though that she represented a role, one that seemed to place the limits as to how far a black woman could go in the workforce of the 70&amp;#039;s. The main reason I love this picture is because I believe it symbolizes the strength, courage, and spirit of black women who had the determination to provide for their families. On the other hand the media could of posed her to look this way but I personally think being a head chef is a pretty prominent position.-- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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==Target Women, Critiquing Depictions of Women in the Media==&lt;br /&gt;
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Dr. McClurken discussed on Tuesday the continually questionable depiction of women in the media and the criticisms of it. I can’t say the number of times my mother has seen a commercial and made a derisive comment about why it has to be mom cleaning up after her incompetent husband and kids, or why around Mother’s Day there are commercials about getting appliances and jewelry while during Father’s Day it’s electronics or actually cool things, or how only women seem to have digestive or plumbing problems. I wanted to share with you all [http://current.com/shows/infomania/target-women/ Target Women with Sarah Haskins], which is basically a humorous and sarcastic challenge to all those ridiculous, shallow commercials. How to be a [http://current.com/shows/infomania/89771812_sarah-haskins-in-target-women-super-special.htm lady] according to commercials: yogurt! looking cute while exercising! cleaning the house! cooking! heart to hearts with girlfriends! jewelry face! marriage! -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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Yes! I was so sad when she stopped making new episodes of Target Women. -Mary Ann&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_14_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 14 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_14_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-04-22T05:53:55Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Date Rape: Hysteria or Epidemic? Katie Roiphe */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Susan Eisenberg, Hard-Hatted Women ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I like the comparison Susan Eisenberg made on page 279 when she says, “Entering construction in the late 1970s was a little like falling in love with someone who you weren’t supposed to.” It seems that the problem for these women was not enjoying the job, but the hostility they faced from men and the fear they had of what the men would think of things such as pregnancy. It is good that these women had each other to lean on and form close bonds. I would guess that the majority of them would not have lasted if they didn’t have these strong connections to other women. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin on her post. It is great that these women had a community of a few other women who were going through the same things to motivate and identify with each other. Many women did not have that in the work place. I found it interesting when Eisenberg talked about working up until being about 6 months pregnant. Her friends outside of work couldn’t conceive (no pun intended) of the notion that people wouldn’t notice that she was pregnant, but as she said “no one expected to see a pregnant woman on a construction site”(280) so they didn’t see it at all under her baggy work cloths. She also presented herself as “she always had” (280) so they really didn’t see a difference.  What I found to be sad was her experience on the work-site with the banter that the men had with each other. While they were joking about beating their wives and other assorted misogynistic things, she was quietly crying to herself in private. It is unfortunate because I feel like that still goes on. When I used to work in restaurants that banter was certainly happening behind the scenes which made many female co-workers uncomfortable. The difference now is that we are able to speak out against and potentially have action taken whereas Eisenberg really felt that  had no power to do so in her position and industry. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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I also agree with Erin and Caryn. It like how the women formed a support network amongst each other when working with the crass men became too much for any one of them to bear alone. However, I also found it interesting how the women didn&amp;#039;t just get support from other &amp;quot;hard hatted&amp;quot; women, but from all women in general. Eisenberg talks about how she ran into women who wished they had led the lifestyle she had and who constantly encouraged her to keep going when things got tough. I think this really illustrates the &amp;quot;sisterhood&amp;quot; aspect of the women&amp;#039;s lib movement. Women of different backgrounds rallied behind Eisenberg and her peers to make sure they had the support and the opportunity that they needed to keep going. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin, that line describes her passion in being a journeywoman. I found her experiences with combining her position and her pregnancy most moving.  Pregnancy is an emotional and delicate process that a woman goes through.   Pregnancy combined with feeling that co-workers would look at you differently and change the dynamics of work if they knew of the pregnancy.  It is understandable why she didn’t tell them until later in her pregnancy.  She did not want her co-workers to think she couldn‘t do her job any less than them.  She was dealing with a lot of opposition in a field so new to women.  As I read this piece, I got a sense of the enormous pressure she had on her and how it would be natural for her to draw strength from other women in the field.  -Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin and Mhimes, in respect to the passion Eisenberg felt for her job and her willingness to conceal her pregnancy. The line that grabbed my attention was when she stated, &amp;quot;Not talking about my pregnancy exaggerated the feeling I often have in construction of feeling split in two&amp;quot; (281). I think this piece really shows how women, like Eisenberg, felt as though they had to hide their pregnancy because they feared ridicule, or job loss.  I think these are very real, articulated fears, because it was common for women in the past to be let go from jobs when pregnant or married.   I enjoyed Eisenberg&amp;#039;s perseverance as a working mother and how she was able to form a good relationship with her male co-workers who actually accepted her as a working woman and a mother.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed reading this piece about a woman who became an electrician. I thought it was really neat to read about how much she loved her blue-collar job. Working in this type of occupation which was a predominantly male field must have been pretty hard at times. Thankfully women had the support of other women. Pregnancy was definitely an issue for these women especially because of their higher risk of miscarriages. I can&amp;#039;t imagine having to do certain tasks and do labor intensive work while being pregnant. The idea of miscarrying must have also led to increase stress. These women were brave and strong women for working these kinds of jobs alongside men and also being pregnant and/or mothers at the same time. -avanness&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Anna and the “sisterhood” ideal of the women liberation movement. I think that it was really important for women to have each other while they were breaking into something that was seen as entirely male. Anyone doing something out of the ordinary would need that support system, especially from her peers. I doubt that Susan would have done and gone as far as she did without her female supporters. Obviously the men on the job weren’t very supportive, of course there is always the exception, but from what Susan describes it seems like most were unsupportive.  “The journeymen were extremely hostile and unwilling to train me,” (279). About the pregnancy I would be really reluctant to speak anything about it as well. Especially after hearing what the men talk about on a day-to-day basis, “jokes about beating up wives, racist and anti-Semitic slurs, degrading remarks about each other’s girlfriends or some women who happened to pass by,” (280). If I heard those remarks every day, even being a strong woman who broke into a new field, I would be worried for myself too. Susan is still a woman and men are still going to be stronger than her no matter what profession she is in. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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The most important thing that kept these women going, despite the difficult working conditions was the camaraderie among these women and without this, working in construction and life would of been more difficult.  The higher graduation rate in the trade school was &amp;quot;owed largely to the support, information-sharing and prodding [they] gave each other&amp;quot; (278).  They also formed groups for personal support and to discuss the varied problems they faced on the job-site.  It seems when times are desperate, women have constantly bonded together to acheive a goal weather it be the right to vote, or just gaining respect and fitting in on a constuction site.  They have an immense sense of pride in what they accomplish and this is demonstrated at the end of this excerpt where an older Eisenberg drove around showing her daughter the buildings she had a part in. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I always pay vague attention when I pass by construction work. The reading said that before the 1970s construction related work was dominated almost one hundred percent by white males. And that number is still high if the sites I see are anything to go by, though I think there are many non-white men entering the field, particularly Hispanics. Last week, when I went by the Eagle Village construction, I actually saw a woman walking amongst the men. One woman. I actually looked for more because I was so surprised (and almost confused a long haired man in a ponytail with woman but that’s another story). I almost did want to cheer her like some women did for Eisenberg. The field seems to be becoming more ethnically diverse, but it’s nowhere near becoming more sexually diverse. I can only recall seeing about two or three women doing construction in most of my lifetime. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked this piece, although I was a little surprised by the level of vulgarity the male construction workers displayed.  I know the stereotypical image of the male construction worker is a sex crazed pig with low levels of manners, but I was actually shocked by the comment the one man made about raping all of the old women in the nursing home.  That was beyond the pale, but I wondered if it was said more for shock value than for anything else.  EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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== Connaught C. Marshner Explains What Social Conservatives Really Want, 1988 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This is great because I have always wanted to know what social conservatives really want =) On a serious note, I think the reason I like this so much is because it was written in 1988 and these are arguments that I have personally heard people make. Honestly, what I really got out of this article was how hard it is to study and interpret history that is so recent because it really is difficult to separate your own feelings from the facts. I think it is important to see where one side is coming from, and even though I hate to admit it, I think that social conservatives, as described in this article, have some valid points (though they are few and far between). For example, women who choose to stay at home should get more credit in forms of tax breaks. &lt;br /&gt;
On a side note -- I am curious about whom the audience of this article was intended to be and if they were trying to sway opinions in any particular way. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Just to respond to Erin, I agree completely that it really is hard to separate your own feelings especially when the &amp;quot;history&amp;quot; you are looking at is barely 2 decades old.  History gets interpreted and reinterpreted countless times since the moment an event occurs, so the closer it is to modern times and your own personal ideals, the more difficult it is took look through the historian&amp;#039;s lens. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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==Jamala McFadden Tells Her Story of Welfare Assistance in the 1990s, 2002==&lt;br /&gt;
Jamala McFadden&amp;#039;s story was very inspiring to me. She was pregnant at 15, which probably made it seem like her life was over. Instead, Jamala made the best out of the situation and worked extremely hard to prove everyone wrong. Many times, I think people assume that other people on welfare don&amp;#039;t deserve it or use it for the wrong reasons. Jamala was not one of those people. She attended college and was almost a 4.0 student, took care of her son, and had a job all at the same time. I can only imagine how rewarding it was when she finished law school. It was interesting that there was not any type of childcare service for the university. I&amp;#039;m not sure if that was something that was normal at large universities, but I feel like childcare should have been offered. I think it is admirable of those single parents who have children to go out and get an education. By not having childcare services, I feel like that is a disservice to women, and it is also discouraging them from reaching their full potential. Lack of childcare, whether it be in the workplace or at universities, is wrong because it inhibits women from being successful. Why restrict someone who is trying to better their own life? In my opinion, the welfare money Jamala McFadden used throughout her life was paid back to society through her amazing successes. --- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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The show 16 &amp;amp; Pregnant , which runs on MTV, follows the lives of teen moms who all initially come to the conclusion that their lives are over (at least as they know it.) I think if those girls were able to read about Jamala they would have a role model to look to because of her ambition and her desire to achieve despite the obstacles. She is the type of person, not just the type of woman, who demonstrates that people are sometimes the victim of their circumstances, and not passive bystanders. She worked so hard to attain her education and took care of her son by working as well as caring for him. Had she had childcare available, it may have been a slight relief for her and a small decrease in her daily pressure. Even today there are places of employment where childcare is not openly available, however I have heard of some community colleges providing childcare so that single mothers can get their education which I feel is an important service to offer and a true benefit that will allow more single parents to gain the education needed to support their child (children). –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Jamala&amp;#039;s story was definitely an inspiring one and one you do not hear everyday.  Like Jmarshal, I thought about that darn MTV show as well while I was reading this.  While those moms are mostly lost young ladies, Jamala shows that even under not the most ideal circumstances, one can persevere and achieve a high set of goals. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Real &amp;quot;Norma Rae&amp;quot; Tells Her Story, Crystal Lee Sutton ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The Real “Norma Rae” was interesting. Sutton seemed to fall into union activity, but proved to be quite brave in the end. She really stuck to her guns throughout this piece. I was not entirely surprised when the Mill forbid the copying the “What the Company Will Do for You”. That doesn’t seem legal but it was a brave thing for Sutton to copy that letter for the National Labor Relations Board. I think that this empowerment allowed Sutton to really make a difference at this mill. She would not give up the fight even at the very end when she got fired and removed from the premises, “I was trying to get back in. I was fighting.” (277)  It’s amazing how, in such a short time, she was educated and indoctrinated into the labor movement. – Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece almost reminded me of the interview I did for the paper.  My interviewee&amp;#039;s father did not agree with what Unions were doing at the time and forbade her to join them, just like Suttons mother and sister did.  &amp;quot;[They] didn&amp;#039;t think I ought to go&amp;quot; (274).  However, unlike my interviewee, Sutton eventually fell into the Unions and I think the main reason was opportunity.  Sutton did not have too much of this in the south and the workings conditions were not very favorable.  Also, the economic status was most likely worse than my interviewee who was upper middle class.  Sutton was almost certainly a lower class than this and in the south she had fewer options and was therefore forced into the Unions.  This excerpt shows that economic status and location growing up definately contribute to opportunities for women. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Caryn, I really liked Sutton&amp;#039;s determination. She literally did everything she could to get that letter. I also liked how she knew that it was more important to get the plant unionized than for her to keep her job. She gave up her own livelihood for the greater good of the factory workers, which is really admirable. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Norma Rae was an interesting piece.  Most intriguing was when she looked around and thought to herself as the boss was lying about what she’d been doing trying to find reasons to fire her [talking on the phone, hanging out in the bathroom, etc] that no one stood up for her, not even ones that had picnics together.  Of course these people were afraid of loosing their jobs but that’s what the boss men expected -to use that fear to prevent them from creating or joining unions.  Norma Rae stood up even though her knees were shaky and it wasn’t in her plan for the day, she did it.  A lot of the readings this week were about women standing up.  When they stood up, they set a precedent… if she made it, so can I!  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Crystal Lee Sutton was a very brave and determined woman. She took risks because she knew what was right. Two things that I thought was interesting in this piece were the fact that after she was fired in 1973, no one would hire her until 1978. That is a long time she went without work and it shows how much employers and businesses really disliked unions and union activity. The other thing that was interesting was the fact that the plant didn&amp;#039;t sign the union contract until 1989, almost six years after the union won an election at the plant. Again, people were very determined to keep unions out of plants and their businesses. -Avanness&lt;br /&gt;
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Crystal Lee Sutton was a powerful woman for her time and wanted to challenge the norms of male/corporate superiority. The line that struck was when Sutton was at the factory for dinner and the union organizer was pressuring her to get the letter off the bulletin board. When Eli said, &amp;quot;Look, Crystal, you can afford to lose a few pounds and I need that letter.&amp;quot;(275). Was this a normal tactic used by men to get women to help the union effort? I am pretty sure it is an unwritten rule that you never call a woman fat, yet did it accomplish what Eli wanted? I think he may have said that to get the rise out of her, it would out of me but probably in retailiation against him, and it ultimately led to her being released from the company but it was a powerful move to challenge the head of corporations and I commend her for it. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women on Welfare, Johnnie Tillmon, 1972==&lt;br /&gt;
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First, let me just say that I love Mrs. Tillmon. Second, I would hate to be on welfare and I hope I will never have to deal with it and by reading this piece I really felt for Mrs. Tillmon. It really helped me to see a different side of being on welfare. I see that we as a society have always looked down on those who resort to the use of welfare because we tend to think of them as inhuman. “In this country, if your any one of those things-poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare-you count less as a human being,” (268).  We see such people as taking our money because they are too lazy to work, but who are we to place such stereotypes upon these people? We just assume things having never experienced them and I see that we tend to believe what the politicians say as welfare being a “cancer eating at our vitals,” (287). We never see the people as mothers or children, just poor people taking away more of our money, aliens to the little world we live in. I’ll admit that I thought that same before because I’ve never had to deal with it. I like that Mrs. Tillmon comes up with a solution though and a smart one at that: “I’d start paying women a living wage for doing the work we are already doing-child-raising and housekeeping,” (289). This way the welfare crisis would be over and housewives wouldn’t be looked down upon either. We’ve spoken of working women as being more outgoing and not seen as “true women” either. Wouldn’t that all fix itself as women got paid for their domestic work in their house? I think we would be respected more and have more opportunities. I would definitely be rich by now. =) -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what Morgan has stated.  It is clear from this piece that being on welfare automatically labels a person with a negative stereotype. I think that this piece shows the difficulty that women have raising a family as a single mother, especially since the A.F.D.C, in most cases, prohibited a male in the household in order to qualify.  The part that stuck out to me was Tillmon&amp;#039;s distinction between &amp;#039;&amp;#039;a&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;the&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man.  She showed how the government was, in essence, controlling women who accepted this welfare.  Her line, &amp;quot;The truth is that A.F.D.C  is like a supersexist marriage.  You trade in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;a&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man for &amp;#039;&amp;#039;the&amp;#039;&amp;#039; man&amp;quot; (287).  It seems like these women who have no other options, but to be on welfare because they do not make enough money to support themselves and their children, have to loose a part of their sexuality as a consequence.  This statement really grabbed me when Tillmon states,  &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s one good thing about welfare.  It kills your illusions about yourself, and about where this society is really at...You have to learn to fight, to be aggressive, or you just don&amp;#039;t make it.  If you can survive being on welfare, you can survive anything&amp;quot; (289).  If this doesn&amp;#039;t read like empowerment, I&amp;#039;m not sure what else does.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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What I noticed most about this article was that it was published in 1972 yet it appears (by Morgan&amp;#039;s and Abratchi&amp;#039;s comments) that I am not the only one who forgot this while I was reading it. It doesn&amp;#039;t say a lot for the improvement of the welfare system in this country when a statement like &amp;quot;In this country if you&amp;#039;re any one of those things--poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare- you count less as a human being. If you&amp;#039;re all those things you don&amp;#039;t count at all except as a statistic.&amp;quot; ( page 286) is still just as relevant in today&amp;#039;s society. I cant even count how many times I personally have had to remind people that most of the people in this country on welfare are children, and that the fat, lazy, unemployed story they like to bring up so often is not the norm. I hope that 38 years from now someone doesn&amp;#039;t read a testimonial of today&amp;#039;s Johnnie Tillmon and think the same exact thing as I have.... -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I too thought there were similarities between 1972 and today when reading this article. When Johnnie Tillmon points out that &amp;quot;the truth is a job doesn&amp;#039;t necessarily mean an adequate income&amp;quot; (pg. 288) she could be talking about today, especially for women. We talked about the wage gap in class a bit yesterday, but it was fitting because yesterday was actually Equal Pay Day. With the current wage gap, women who worked for all of 2009 had to work until April 20, 2010 to earn the same amount that men made in 2009 alone. That illustrates how significant a problem pay differences are today, and they were worse for women like Tillmon trying to support their families. -Mary Ann &lt;br /&gt;
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==Sex and Sports, Mariah Burton Nelson, 1994==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article highlights the transition Nelson was forced to make from the community she found as a young woman where she felt free and empowered to celebrate herself and express herself as a lesbian, to the &amp;quot;real world&amp;quot; where she was forced to choose between being open about her homosexuality or continue playing professional basketball.  I couldn&amp;#039;t believe they sent the women on the California team to charm school in order to &amp;quot;portray a feminine (that is, heterosexual) image.&amp;quot; [311]  The focus on this transition effectively illustrates the societal stifling of those perceived to be different, particularly those who challenge socially-encouraged gender roles.  This transition is reflected in a sort of reverse in the following account &amp;quot;La Mujer,&amp;quot; where the writer finds her individuality and strength when she is finally able to explore her identity after a stifling adolescence.  -Erin B. &lt;br /&gt;
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My grandmother had to play half court basketball in a skirt when she was in school, so the fact that women had a professional basketball league at all was a huge step up. But men still resented and feared women&amp;#039;s entrance into the realm of professional sports. Nelson&amp;#039;s coach called the team girls so that he didn&amp;#039;t have to take them seriously as adults (and perhaps so that they themselves would be fooled into thinking they didn&amp;#039;t deserve to be treated as equals). Maybe these men thought that women playing sports would somehow take away from men sports, that if women could be strong and talented enough to play basketball that the men playing the same sport would lose their legitimacy somehow. After all, if a &amp;quot;girl&amp;quot; could do it, then what was so special about them? -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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While I don&amp;#039;t like how the Pioneers coach treated his players, I think he is right when saying that sports is a business.  I think there are a lot of interesting debates that revolve around this topic.  I would assume that the reason more men&amp;#039;s college sports are shown on television is because more people watch them, which means more money can be made on advertising.  Is it then unreasonable to spend more money on a program that makes more money for the college?  Also, I believe in most professional sports there is something like the personal conduct policy that the NFL has, which states that players have to avoid &amp;quot;conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the National Football League&amp;quot; (http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/21598/nfl-personal-conduct-policy).  I don&amp;#039;t think it is right that Nelson got fired for making an appearance at Gay Pride Day, but it probably has more to do with money than what&amp;#039;s wrong or right.   My guess is that Pioneers did not want an openly gay woman on the team because they felt that it would change their image to a point where they would lose fans and therefore lose money.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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==The Voice of the an Anorexic, Abra Fortune Chernik, 1995==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article scared and gave hope to me. Of course I’ve heard of anorexic and I’ve seen it, but I’ve never felt the pain like I did in reading Mrs. Chernik’s first-hand account. But through all of the pain of eating and binging she persevered through it and that was what really got through to me. Instead of beating herself up for being anorexic and not being able to fix it, she found what was wrong with society and how they saw her as a woman. As women we try to live up to unrealistic standards thinking that that is what men want and what other women will be jealous of. It’s what society has done to us, it’s damaged us. Mrs. Chernick finally broke through this when she saw herself and “observed a woman held up by her culture as the physical ideal because she was starving, self-obsessed, and powerless, a women called beautiful because she threatened no one except herself,” (323) . Women are not suppose to be powerful and dominate of themselves, that’s what were told. Men are to be the superior and made to feel that way; maybe that is why they seem so confident in their bodies. “As long as society resists female power, fashion will call healthy women physically flawed,” (324). If only we could all learn to be “based on an image of a women warrior,” (324) and be happy as ourselves. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I personally was touched by the article because even me and my sister have had a running joke that any girl who hasn&amp;#039;t had an eating disorder has just failed at having one. Although it&amp;#039;s just a joke and neither of us are really serious about it, it still would better for a girls self esteem  to be a &amp;quot;size&amp;quot; 00 and never have to worry about anything like eating ever again than to be fat and ridiculed for the rest of your life. It sucks, but its&amp;#039; true. I felt most touched, (and most appalled by the society that I live in), by the statement &amp;quot;Gazing in the mirror at my emaciated body, I observed a woman held upby her culture as the physcial ideal because she was starving, self obsessed and powerless, a women called beautiful because she threatened no one except herself. Despite my intelligence, my education and my supposed manhattan sophistication I had believed all of the lies; I had almost given my life in order to achieve the sickly impotence that tis culture aggressively links with female happiness, love and success&amp;quot; (page 323-324). WHY is this? I don&amp;#039;t understand how a male who isn&amp;#039;t exactly the fittest of the fit can walk around without a shirt on (because it&amp;#039;s hot) and have no qualms about the fact that his beer belly is hanging out, but most of my girl friends won&amp;#039;t run outside in a sports bra because of the self consciousness attached with being shirtless (and because it substantially increases the amount of people who think it&amp;#039;s okay to yell, holler, whistle and even take pictures of you.). It doesn&amp;#039;t make sense. I&amp;#039;m not saying that the man should be self-conscious but at the same time. It&amp;#039;s a ridiculous double standard that leads to terrible diseases and someone almost killing themselves to never be skinny enough. I consecutively run for at least an hour every day of my life, and I barely fit into society&amp;#039;s standard for clothing sizes. Beauty isn&amp;#039;t an eating disorder, or at least if it is, can there not be a double standard about it?  --Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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This was a ridiculously moving account of an extremely common issue.  The help that she got was exceptional as well and, sadly, most girls don&amp;#039;t get this kind of treatment.  I worked in emotional and behavioral facilities for close to two years and saw girls like this all the time.  A couple of the women i met didn&amp;#039;t make it.  Chernik articulates a lot of the pathology behind this disease powerfully.  &amp;quot;I had reduced my world to a plate of steamed carrots, and over this tiny kingdom I proudly crowned myself queen.&amp;quot; [322] This passage illustrated her desire to shrink (and ultimately disappear) not just in size, but in character, in personality and strength.  The writer uses the word &amp;quot;impotence&amp;quot; to describe the effects of the disease, which struck me as a powerful characterization.  The social significance of the prevalence of this disorder can&amp;#039;t be understated.  I&amp;#039;m sure I can&amp;#039;t speak for all women, but I&amp;#039;d guess that a lot of the females who read this can identify (or could in the past) with some of the mentality associated with an unhealthy body image.  The praise that she received was the scariest part.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that the praise is the scariest part--it&amp;#039;s what keeps fueling Chernik&amp;#039;s delusions--and it comes from all sides (not only the random strangers, but also her friends and family). The most chilling part of her essay, for me, is when she has her body fat tested, is found to be severely underweight, and is outright congratulated, and even rewarded, for her unhealthiness. That&amp;#039;s the turning point in her story, when she realizes that anorexia is not really about controlling her body/life, but really society controlling her. I think the pathology here is very very interesting, and that more women and girls need to read this essay, to see what it&amp;#039;s really like to be a full-fledged anorexic, that it is an out-of-control disease and not glamorous at all. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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This article really struck me, as three of my friends have struggled with anorexia.  One of them is a guy, so I do not want us to forget that body image is not only something women struggle with.  However, I think it is safe to say that it is a much more pronounced problem for women. One of the most striking things about this piece is the societal idea that the most beautiful women are those “who resemble little girls.”  This idea caused Chernik to reject the changes puberty wrought in her rather than embrace them, and this is incredibly sad to me.  And these societal perceptions of beauty are a much more amorphous thing to fight against than unequal wages or something similar, as the government can only enact so many laws against the media without abridging the right to free speech, and it certainly can’t command people to change their minds about beauty.  Hopefully, as more women like Chernik who have struggled with eating disorders become more outspoken about their experiences, change will come.  – Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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It just struck me that it&amp;#039;s important to remember that when we say &amp;quot;society,&amp;quot; we mean both men AND women. As much as it&amp;#039;s sometimes easier (from a woman&amp;#039;s perspective) to point the finger at the &amp;quot;patriarchy&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;gendered media&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;male chauvinist pigs&amp;quot; as the parties responsible for the objectification of women as sex objects, and therefore lay down a standard of beauty/appearance (and consequently weight), I have to remind myself that we as women do more than our fair share of reinforcing these beauty myths. In reality, our willingness to follow beauty trends and subject ourselves to what boils down to self-torture in pursuit of an unreachable ideal, and our willingness to expect and encourage our friends to do the same, keeps the flawed expectations at status quo. Thoughts? --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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Just like everyone above me, I was very moved and upset by this piece. I nearly lost two of my best friends to anorexia, and reading Chernik&amp;#039;s words really resonated with their stories. I think there is something very valid and absolutely true in the media forcing lanky, thin women on us as the ideal. It is an ideal that most cannot live up to and for some leads to this horrible disease or its sister, bulimia. However, I think there is also something for individuals who may fit society&amp;#039;s ideal, and brought to anorexia in an effort to try and maintain it. Like Sarah mentioned, her family, her friends, complete strangers complimented her on her emaciation. I think as a discussion it should not be about &amp;quot;real women have curves&amp;quot; or being a 00, because there are women who are naturally 00 and are not voluptuous. I feel it should be a discussion of health, not of a size, because otherwise we are just perpetuating it. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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==Organizing the Farm Workers, Jessie Lopez De La Cruz==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article made me believe in not only the union fight but the power women could have in the union struggle. The line that clearly stood out to me was, &amp;quot;It doesn&amp;#039;t take courage. All it takes is standing up for what you believe in,...&amp;quot;(285). Jessie did not want to be known as courageous, as someone who should be idiolzed but she was, for a woman to step outside societal norms and challenge practices was not common. She just wanted people to come together and fight for what they deserved and the help she had from the nurse to enter Parlier proved that many people felt the same and just wanted to see a good outcome.-Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I saw a lot of parallels between these Mexican American women organizing the farm workers and the African American women involved in the black civil rights movement. Both faced intense discrimination from the men within their own movements. Even though these women worked side by side with men in the fields, the men still didn&amp;#039;t believe they should be involved in political action. Yet the farm workers at least had the support of Cesar Chavez who specifically sought out women activists, something the black civil rights workers did not have. Chavez seems to have been very forward thinking in his refusal to allow traditional Mexican American dynamics to keep women in the home and away from organizing, something that I&amp;#039;m sure helped his movement greatly. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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==Date Rape: Hysteria or Epidemic? Katie Roiphe==&lt;br /&gt;
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Although when I first started reading this piece I thought that Roiphe was making some streched claims, she did bring up a lot of great points.  I think her willingness to show that the issue of &amp;quot;date rape&amp;quot; actually produces a negative view on women is interesting.  She believes that &amp;quot;date rape&amp;quot; victimizes women and labels women as incapable of being sensual beings.  I thought this was interesting because a lot of women in the feminist movement (first and second) were trying to move away from this Victorian stereotype of women being pure and pious.  Roiphe shows that this date rape movement is actually, in some ways, harking back to this old ideal that rejects women as sexual beings.  Roiphe is instead promoting that women take responsibility for their own actions and not subject themselves to this stereotype and to not be afraid to be sexual.   -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I am still unsure how I feel about this article. I have known people who have come extremely close to being date raped (luckily they had a friend or two that recognized what had happened and came to their aide) and to think that at any point it could be swept away as “hysteria” is hard to understand. From other classes I have taken, it is more common for women to be characterized as “hysterical” (a long time ago women were called hysterical when they menstruated or had severe mood swings due to PMS, now it is more understood and while the term hysterical is still used today, it still almost always refers to women. Just a random tid-bit of information) than men and the actions taken against women falls the same way.  I think there is a difference between being sexual and consenting to sex, saying that a girl does not take responsibility for “date-rape” is almost saying the same thing as “she was asking for it” by wearing a certain outfit. I do agree with CBrau that today the term “rape” is used much too loosely and has as a result made the idea of rape less common (the shock value is not as high as it was when the term first came into use).—jmarshal  &lt;br /&gt;
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I&amp;#039;m glad I am not the only one who finished the article and was unsure of how to feel! I am tempted to agree with some of the statements Roiphe is making but at the same time I feel like it might be insensitive of me as a woman to agree with a statement that in someways minimizes such a serious issue. So conflicted! However while some of Roiphe&amp;#039;s statements were completely valid especially her comparisons of &amp;quot;date rape pamphlets to victorian guides to conduct&amp;quot; (340) I think it is better to exaggerate an issue rather than minimize and have women be more over cautious as opposed to careless, as long as the severity and weight of the word rape is understood. Rape has become too easy of a word for people to say (for example has anyone else ever heard someone jokingly use the expression &amp;quot;end rape say yes&amp;quot;) do we really live in a society where that is ok???? --Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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I would have to agree with Roiphe that when it comes to rape, some people really do go overboard with it.  It is of course a very serious issue, but I at least agree with her irritation with women who are suspcious of all their male friends.  Those poor guys!  And rape including including more than the physical act (i.e. verbal coercion)?  I think this warping of the definition can be likened to how the seriousness of rape is really downplayed in our culture today.  People have it in their every day vocabulary (it&amp;#039;s a commonly used internet and gaming term) and many people still don&amp;#039;t realize just how traumatizing rape can be (not to mention, some people don&amp;#039;t seem to treat it like the crime it is!).  I am just wondering how we went from one extreme to the other; from hysteria to disinterest?  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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This date rape article reminded me of a much more recent article in today&amp;#039;s news.  Alex Knepper, a student columnist from American University, recently wrote an article saying, &amp;quot;Any woman who heads to a party, drinks five cups of jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex.&amp;quot; This has sense triggered tons of controversy,  placing the definition date rape into debate.  Although it is possible there could be some truth of his statement, it still a very sensitive topic to suggest ANY woman who behaves this way &amp;quot;wants sex.&amp;quot; -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
 Here is a direct link to the article http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/02/earlyshow/main6357129.shtml&lt;br /&gt;
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I think what&amp;#039;s most problematic about this article is that while Roiphe does point out that the term rape is perhaps too broad, she does not give a specific enough example of where exactly to draw the line. I agree that it&amp;#039;s become a sort of blanket term for a wide variety of unwanted sexual advances, and sometimes is applied even more arbitrarily (CBrau:  One day while playing Call of Duty my teenage brother used the phrase &amp;quot;I totally raped him&amp;quot; (referring to an opposing player). Last time that ever happened, believe you me.) While it&amp;#039;s true that what we consider date rape does occur (far more often than we know), we need to remember that remorse after the fact ALONE does not make it okay to call rape. Whoever does the sitting down and defining of terms needs to reevaluate the criteria for something being called &amp;quot;rape.&amp;quot; --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women and Disabilities, Nancy Mairs==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article I found to be empowering for anyone who has a degenerative disease, they know they are not alone and while a cure would be ideal, they can survive and still enjoy life. The one issue I had with the article was when she discussed the use of the word, &amp;quot;cripple&amp;quot; and said, &amp;quot;[people]-wince at the word &amp;#039;&amp;#039;cripple&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, as they do not at handicapped or disabled.&amp;quot;(317). I do not think that is true, as someone who has personal experience with a disabled person I know they are still looked at differently when the word disabled is brought up, or someone notices their license plate with disabled tags, and people make comments. No matter how a person is classified as crippled, disabled, or handicapped there is always an ignorant person who will make a remark, but people like Nancy make the best of it. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Megan, I was so uplifted by and impressed with Nancy Mairs&amp;#039; strength, courage and humor, maybe not despite her disbility but because of it. Mairs empahsizes that her MS is no who she is, it does not define her. She is a person living with MS, not a victim of it. However, at the same time, she acknowledges her disability and how it has helped shape her into a fierce and stalwart person. That balance is key is Nancy Mairs&amp;#039; ability to live with and push through her disability. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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==Lindsy Van Gelder Reports on the &amp;quot;World Series of Sex-Discrimination Suits,&amp;quot; 1978==&lt;br /&gt;
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The idea of reverse discrimination against men is something I find quite interesting. Affirmative action programs were not meant to push men out, but were intended to give women a fair chance. I just think men felt threatened by the idea of women working at an equal level with them. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe the disparity between men and women&amp;#039;s pay, such as this woman: &amp;quot;whose annual salary was $2500 less than that of the average male in the &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Times&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Washington bureau.&amp;quot; (P. 464) What astounded me was that one woman was more than qualified for a job, but was passed up for it multiple times, with the job going to men. The article stated, &amp;quot;sexism does indeed exist there, but in a genteel form in keeping with the overall tone of the paper.&amp;quot; (P. 465) So does that make sexism okay? That it is only a &amp;quot;genteel form&amp;quot; that goes along with what the paper wants? Another thing I was shocked at and didn&amp;#039;t understand was when the executive was talking about how he should hire the woman who was overqualified for the job. He said, &amp;quot;If she weren&amp;#039;t a woman, she&amp;#039;d be in the bullpen right now!&amp;quot; (P. 465) Why didn&amp;#039;t he just hire her? I think it was more about what was socially acceptable at the time as well as maybe his reputation? Whatever the reason, it amazes me at how restricting social norms could be, to both men and women. The worst part about this entire suit that these women of the Post brought to court is that even if the case was argued well in court, what is the most progress the women would have made...what would they have achieved? Even if they won, it would be difficult to actually institute change in that particular workplace, which is probably what kept many women from suing.. they knew it would become a dead end. --Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== A Day in the Kitchen (photograph) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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When I saw this picture, I immediately had the thought that this woman is proud of her job.  Just the way that she carries herself and her facial expression, she seems to take great pride in her work.  And yet, we have to ask ourselves at least two things.  Has she been posed?  And is she actually happy with what she is doing?  Her expression seems genuine, but maybe she is a woman that makes the best out of what she has.  Perhaps if she had the option to become a chef or not, she would not have.  It could only be through society&amp;#039;s limited career options for blacks that she became a chef.  And in the caption, it is implied that even though African American women have held jobs longer than white women, they are still discriminated against and pushed aside by those lesser experienced white women.  This certainly makes one think.  Do employers really look at skill?  Or are they still blindsided by prejudices?  They probably were when this photo was taken (1976).  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I really like &amp;quot;A Day in the Kitchen.&amp;quot; This woman just looks proud and happy. Velma James, a head chef, seems to be the queen of her kitchen.  It&amp;#039;s unfortunate though that she represented a role, one that seemed to place the limits as to how far a black woman could go in the workforce of the 70&amp;#039;s. The main reason I love this picture is because I believe it symbolizes the strength, courage, and spirit of black women who had the determination to provide for their families. On the other hand the media could of posed her to look this way but I personally think being a head chef is a pretty prominent position.-- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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==Target Women, Critiquing Depictions of Women in the Media==&lt;br /&gt;
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Dr. McClurken discussed on Tuesday the continually questionable depiction of women in the media and the criticisms of it. I can’t say the number of times my mother has seen a commercial and made a derisive comment about why it has to be mom cleaning up after her incompetent husband and kids, or why around Mother’s Day there are commercials about getting appliances and jewelry while during Father’s Day it’s electronics or actually cool things, or how only women seem to have digestive or plumbing problems. I wanted to share with you all [http://current.com/shows/infomania/target-women/ Target Women with Sarah Haskins], which is basically a humorous and sarcastic challenge to all those ridiculous, shallow commercials. How to be a [http://current.com/shows/infomania/89771812_sarah-haskins-in-target-women-super-special.htm lady] according to commercials: yogurt! looking cute while exercising! cleaning the house! cooking! heart to hearts with girlfriends! jewelry face! marriage! -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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Yes! I was so sad when she stopped making new episodes of Target Women. -Mary Ann&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

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		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_13_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 13 Questions/Comments</title>
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				<updated>2010-04-16T02:19:53Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /*  */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;THIS WEEK&amp;#039;S DISCUSSION IS ABOUT THE PAPERS TURNED IN, NOT THE READING.  You are still responsible for the reading, but the posting should be about the papers.  A link to the papers will be emailed to you by Wednesday, April 14.&lt;br /&gt;
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NOTE: You do not need to post about the reading for April 15 (though you are responsible for reading it).&lt;br /&gt;
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Class discussion:  We will pick up the wiki discussion during class on Tuesday, April 20.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;What patterns do you see?  What experiences stand out?  Did these interviews challenge or meet with the trends we&amp;#039;ve talked about in class?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I definitely see that &amp;quot;typical housewife and mother&amp;quot; trend with a majority of the women interviewed.  The women who did work either had to work for economic reasons or because they really enjoyed their jobs.  I think only one woman regretted working because she hadn&amp;#039;t been able to focus on her kids and another felt bad about it at the time because it just wasn&amp;#039;t what society expected.  However, there were a few women who focused on a higher education and a professional career, whether they stayed single or got married later.  With some exceptions, the trend was to work in female positions (i.e. nursing, teaching).  Overall, I think it&amp;#039;s important to note that most of these women can look back on their lives and are proud of how they lived them; even those who went with the flow and were homemakers. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with CBrau. I was surprised by how many other women had experiences that were similar to the woman that I interviewed. Like CBrau stated, women seemed to enter into nursing and teaching the most, but it seemed like they were forced into these positions for lack of opportunity elsewhere. It also seems like most of the women were forced into these positions because their fathers or husbands believed that they would be starting a family and spending money on an education was wasteful. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was very interesting and amusing that in Alices&amp;#039; paper, Lois Wagner had miniature army corps suits and have fake machine guns and little did they know that the real women in the WAC never saw any action in battle.  Also, these were just young girls and had no idea of a feminist movement or what women were going through at this particular period yet they were supporting the efforts of women, even if they were too young to understand. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved the story about the WAC suits!  Normally you would think of boys putting on uniforms and imitating soldiers, and yet here was a little girl doing it.  I&amp;#039;ve honestly never thought about little girls being interested in the military or what children had to balance during WWII (&amp;quot;fun and fear&amp;quot;).  -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I saw many similarities between the women who were interviewed including the roles they had as mothers, wives, and women in the workforce and society. I definitely saw the pattern of many women who worked in the domestic sphere who also sometimes worked in careers outside the home. Most of the women seemed to have had children of the baby boom generation or were baby boomers themselves. In Dvorak&amp;#039;s paper, the woman she interviewed challenged some of the trends of the time by focusing on her education and career of dentistry rather than on finding a husband and starting a family right away. I also noticed in Rowley&amp;#039;s paper, the woman got a divorce about the time in the 1960s that we talked about in class when there seemed to be a high divorce rate. I think it&amp;#039;s interesting so see the similarities between the people who were interviewed but good to also note that all of their stories are still unique in their own way. -Avanness&lt;br /&gt;
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The similarities between the women interviewed are clearly defined, many became mothers and housewives right after graduation and a few had careers but the majority of women thought they should fulfill the roles they were told to. They produced the children who led further reforms for women and I saw in a few papers such as Mary Ann&amp;#039;s the women, who produced the baby boomers, did not have time to be politically active and brushed it aside. It reminded me of the woman I interviewed who admitted they were too tied up in their worlds to pay attention to outside influences. In a few papers I thought the women who were single mothers and able to support themselves and children were leaders of the Women&amp;#039;s Movement even if they did not openly admit it. Those women started the trend towards independence and without their mark in the workplace and challenging &amp;quot;male dominated roles&amp;quot; women may not have acheived what they did in the 1960-1970s era. I agree with Avanness it is important to note that even with all the similarities all of the women were exceptional in their stories. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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As I read through these papers, many of us focused on working women because I think that is something that changed continuously throughout the 20th century. The trends of women working never remained the same; they changed almost decade to decade. It seemed that many of the women interviewed returned to work after raising their children and I think for most women that was a way of raising self-esteem, that women were capable of being both a wife and a career women. I think the idea of women not working because of the influence it would have on their children was another recurring trend. In Taylor Brann’s paper, she talked about a woman who left her job in the 1980s to take care of her children. It was almost socially unacceptable for women to even think of balancing work and a career at the time, espeically when the focus was transitioning more and more towards the family. Although I say that most experiences seemed similar, I think some stood out, such as Meg’s interview and Fitch’s interview. In both these interviews, the women they interviewed seemed to have no problem finding jobs or even moving into the professional world and I think that was definitely a step in the right direction. These women seemed to have defied some of the odds against women, especially for Meg&amp;#039;s interviewee, who worked as a dental professional. Another noticeable feature was the jobs women traditionally took on. Many of them were related to nursing, or clerical work. Along with everyone else, it amazed me that although these women lived their life at different times in the 20th century, their experiences were quite similar, with history being passed down from generation to generation. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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First, I’d like to add a detail to my own paper that was in my footnotes, but since the footnotes did not show up in Google Docs, I want to say it here, because I think it’s important.  Why exactly Lois left Mary Washington is uncertain, since in previous conversations I’ve had with her, she claimed that the school kicked her out for getting married.  Though, if it’s true that the school kicked her out, I’m under the suspicion that it’s more likely because she was pregnant.  However, when I sat down with her in the interview, she changed the story to the one presented in the main body of my paper.  In the long run, it doesn’t change the fact that she has no regrets about never finishing college, but it would effect how we view the college’s policy towards such a situation.  &lt;br /&gt;
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On a different topic, I found it interesting to see the women’s reactions to the feminist movement.  Ms. Blalock outright opposed the movement, not because she objected to women working or equality between men and women, but because she saw it as detrimental to children.  There is no denying the authority she has on the subject of children, having been an educator for so long, but it makes me think of our earlier discussions of how someone always sees the American family as being on the brink of failure.    Other women, like Deb Lee and Sue Ward, don’t seem to particularly dislike the movement, but it did not appear to really play much into their lives, which judging from my own interview as well, seems typical.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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Some women, including the one I interviewed, struggled with maintaining their careers and being mothers at the same time. Working mothers have struggled with maintaining both for many decades, but for the most part (aside from WWII), society was against them working. As was mentioned in the lecture (which I wish I could have used in my paper), society’s view on working women began to change in the 1960s and 1970s. Some women, as the papers showed, managed to balance work and family and do it successfully, and for once they had the backing of the public while they were doing it. Daycares, for instance, were a great help in maintaining this balance. However, many mothers still struggled with the balance, and while they had society more willing to support them working, they now had a new ideal to live up to. My interviewee, for instance, drove herself into depression in her attempt to “have it all,” and she believes that the media helped trick women into thinking they can do it all. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It is interesting how strikingly similar the experiences of many of the interviewed women were. Among the slew of really well written papers that I read, I focused on three in particular, Taylor Braun&amp;#039;s, Catherine Brau&amp;#039;s, and Ellen Fritz&amp;#039;s paper. These three interviewees shared a similar view to each other in the fact that they rejected or simply cared not to participate in the NOW movement and women&amp;#039;s liberation. In Braun and Fritz&amp;#039;s papers the women felt that they wanted to focus on raising their children and maintaining a healthy family. In Brau&amp;#039;s paper, her interviewee had very little time to devote to the women&amp;#039;s lib movement, though, like my interview subject, she was involved in the anti-war movement. These women expressed many of the concerns and comments that we have been discussing in class about a women&amp;#039;s balance between domestic and public life, with their family and work, and the roles they played in all of these arenas. I appreciated how some of the other papers focused on the academic efforts that their interviewees pursued. My interviewee also received a college degree and returned to school later in life to pursue her law degree.  What I thought was really interesting is that my interviewee felt that she did not live the “typical” life that many baby boomer women did, but after reading these papers, her answers turned out to be so similar to many of the others. I agree with Megan to an extent about how the women fulfilled the roles that they were “supposed to” fill, but some of them really seemed to want that life. In Taylor’s paper, her interviewee felt guilty and wrong for returning to work once the children were in school. It seems that some of the women did not want to fulfill the typical roles but others seemed content in their actions. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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Coming off what Caryn said I think it is interesting that her subject felt that her experiences were not typical yet this project showed that alot of women had similar experiences. I think it reflects that perhaps some women felt they were alone in there desire to continue there life after children and marriage. It reminded me of Betty Friedans article where she found women discussing this &amp;quot;unnameable problem&amp;quot; as if it were taboo. I know my interviewee felt isolated in her experiences as a working mother and eventually a divorcee yet this study shows that many women were dealing with the same issues. But i do think it is interesting that the subjects would feel like there experience was atypical of other women, yet in reality it may not have been. -Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Caryn, I noticed that a lot of the women had similar life experiences, or that there were at least some common themes among a lot of the papers. The fact that so many women were happy being housewives always strikes me, because I always revert to the image of the depressed and oppressed mid-century wife and mother. Yes, some women felt restricted by that life, but not all, and we shouldn&amp;#039;t forget that many women were happy when we look at what, to many of us, appears to have been a pretty limiting situation. Socioeconomic status also played a huge role in these women&amp;#039;s lives in terms of the education and opportunities open to them but also in the expectations set for them. For example, Women whose parents had some money were expected to go to college, meaning that they probably weren&amp;#039;t marrying while still in high school. Finally, many of the women broke traditional norms in different ways, from not marrying at all, to going to dental school, to raising children as a single parent. The big name leaders of the women&amp;#039;s rights movement did a lot, but it&amp;#039;s really the collective actions of all of these everyday women that created the more egalitarian society we have today, yet most of them seem largely unaware of the changes they were helping to bring about. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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Even if women were limited to specific fields when trying to obtain work, I found that many were working for at least a point in their lives.  Many of these women were middle class and attended high school and even college.  Most women got jobs after college or after high school and either kept working or got married.  It seems like a fair amount of women stayed in the home, but it was becoming less expected of them and many worked even if they were also raising families.  There were a few single mothers and they worked mostly because they had no choice and were the sole provider&amp;#039;s for their family.  Working women were certainly becoming more prominent. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Many of these women had similar life experiences regarding their role in the latter half of the 20th century.  What I found fascinating was that the women that had children at an early age often sought a career after their children were older.  These women found a second life at the age of 40 or 45 in which they had raised their family and now had the opportunity and freedom to pursue their dreams.  Additionally, these women have the benefit of life experiences which would affect their choices for the future.  The professional women who had gone to college right from high school often waited to their late 20&amp;#039;s or early 30&amp;#039;s to start a family and then were either forced to choose between their career or their kids; or to put their children into daycare.  They are also more financially secure and stable than the women who married at a young age.  Who&amp;#039;s to say which option is better.  Women, unlike men in society, are forced to be put in the position of making these decisions and living with any ramifications. - EFritz&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_12_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 12 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_12_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-04-08T05:22:33Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* &amp;quot;We Marched for Our Rights,&amp;quot; Rev. Naomi Craig */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Civil Rights Activists, Rosa Parks and Virginia Foster Durr ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Everybody knew everbody else was lying, but to save face, they had to lie&amp;quot; (p. 225).  We have all heard the story of Rosa Parks and the bus boycotts, just with less detail.  I was definitely not expecting the role that white women played.  I suppose it makes sense to focus on those who were being directly affected by the Civil Rights Movement, but perhaps these boycotts would not have been as successful without the help of various white women.  They generously offered rides to black women to and from work despite the chance of getting a ticket, something that could have helped keep the morale up for the strike.  White women also understood the important of keeping black women&amp;#039;s involvement in the boycotts a secret.  It was obvious that these black women needed their jobs and being a part of the boycott would surely get them fired.  I&amp;#039;m just wondering if all the white women who offered a ride or kept a secret agreed with the boycotts or even with the Civil Rights Movement?  Durr is clearly biased in favor of civil rights, but maybe some women were just being nice and did not agree with civil rights or even understand what the women were boycotting against. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed this article because it shows the role that white women played in the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. It is interesting because the initial thought one generally has when thinking of the 1950s South is the hatred whites had towards African Americans and the fear that caused in the African American community. However, what this article illustrates is the fact that many white women were as active in the Civil Rights movement as they could be. I seriously doubt that there are statistics regarding the number of white women who helped Black women in the bus boycott because of the fear that was in both parties. It is interesting because the white women would lie and say that they didn’t support the boycott or help the black women. And the black women would lie and say that they were not participating, they just needed to take care of a sick child (or something like that). I am curious about how widespread this actually was, but I guess we will never know because of how secretive these women had to be. I am curious if the husbands of these white women were aware of their participation and support. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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What Rosa Parks did was defy a social norm, that blacks were supposed to move when whites told them to do so.  To our generation that seems ignorant but I remember my mother saying that she never went to school with an African American and that it was just expected you didn’t mix the two.  My dad said they had two theaters one for blacks and one for whites but they never thought twice about it.  Rosa Parks along with other civil rights activists were going against these unjust socially accepted policies that had been legalized.  The idea of integration seemed like a social taboo and if you crossed it then you were looked at unjustly as well.  I think this is why the white women giving rides kept it secret.  The black women may have feared loosing their jobs if their employers knew they were involved in the boycott.   -- Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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While I read this excerpt, I could only imagine Rosa Parks demeanor during her ordeal on the bus. She seemed so calm to publicly break the segregation laws for the bus. I&amp;#039;m sure her demeanor was quite calm and collected, with Parks being perfectly  content to say no. The police arrested Rosa Parks on &amp;quot;suspicion,&amp;quot; and even with that, Parks was unsure of what she was being arrested for. It just surprised me how corrupt the police were at the time; they did everything within their power, and even beyond that, to ensure that life was made harder for African Americans. Did nobody see a problem with that? Or did people just accept it? Also, what happened to white people who had dissenting opinions about the corruptness and the unfair treatment of African Americans at the time? I feel like nobody really spoke up about the injustices that were occurring, for fear of what might happen to them. I think it is interesting how the white women actually believed the African American women and men about why they were walking instead of riding the bus; it was because they were truly boycotting, but the boycotters lied to keep their jobs. &amp;quot;The white people really believed that. They didn&amp;#039;t see through it all.&amp;quot;(P. 225) Both the whites and African Americans were working together to help the boycott, yet neither group knew they were working in conjunction with the other. This was maybe the first time that whites and Blacks were working together for a common cause: civil rights. However, neither group even knew it. --- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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Rosa was sitting in her right section, the back section that was reserved to the blacks, and was then asked to move. I really don’t understand what gave the bus driver the right to ask her to move. She had done everything that was required of her and she hadn’t broken any rules. “After I had paid my fare and occupied a seat, I didn’t think I should have to give it up,” (222). Rosa was in the “right” section, had paid her fare, and was sitting down (she had paid for her seat). Just because white people came onto the bus and didn’t have a seat, the black people shouldn’t have been made to move. If black people had come onto the bus and didn’t have seats, they would have been made to stand in the aisle, so why shouldn’t have the white people been made too? Of course I am thinking in modern terms probably, it just seems so unfair. Just like the black and white people did, I would have lied about who was a part of bus boycott. I can understand why a majority of the white community would have lied for the black participates too. This way the black servants wouldn’t be locked up and they could continue to provide their services to the white families that employed them and in turn they would continue to receive a weekly check. Both parties would benefit from the unsaid agreement of lying for the other. “Everybody knew everybody else was lying,” (225). -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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Like several people above stated, I really liked the camaraderie that developed between some black and white women during the bus boycott. Although I&amp;#039;m sure this wasn&amp;#039;t the case for every white woman in Montgomery, many of the white employers of black domestics pretended not to realize that their employees were participating in the boycott. This seems to me whatever facade the white women put up was just a thin disguise for the support of integration. Otherwise, why else would the women give their employees rides to work, or excuse frequent tardiness? Like the article stated, everyone knew everyone else was lying about their participation or support of the Montgomery bus boycott.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked how Anna referred to the relationship between black and white women as a camaraderie.  I think that really captures the essence of this piece. I think another important thing that this piece does is show how black women HAD to work, yet they also felt that they had to participate in the civil rights movement if they wanted things to change.  The relationship that developed between white and black women in this particular case is quite remarkable, but it makes me wonder, is this type of thing common, or is this just a special case?   The civil rights movement seems to be flagged with a series of things that make one wonder, why did that happen?  Rosa Parks did not appear to be the type of woman to get arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus, yet she was.  It also appears unlikely that white women would help black women, especially, I would think, out of fear.  Yet, these things happened, as this piece showed.  It helped me realize that there was more the civil rights movements than blacks fighting for black rights. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I have to add my two cents to the conversation about the relationship between white and black women during the bus boycott. A few people have pointed out that the situation was a positive one, a time when white women willingly helped their black employees support the bus boycott even if neither party directly admitted to it. Maybe I&amp;#039;m just more cynical, but I don&amp;#039;t believe that most of the white women wanted to be helping the civil rights movement. These were not women who had showed any interest in equality before the boycott, and the &amp;quot;roar of indignation&amp;quot; over the issue only came when the mayor suggested women stop employing their black maids. In my view, Montgomery&amp;#039;s white women were far more influenced by the domestic ideals of the day than civil rights protests. Black servants kept white homes neat and white children out of the mud so that white women could look their judgmental neighbors in the eye. Had the black women stopped coming to work, white wives and mothers would have had to do complete the never ending list of domestic chores required of &amp;quot;respectable women&amp;quot; themselves or risk letting some things fall through the cracks and losing some of the esteem of their neighbors. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann about not believing that most of the white women wanted to help in the civil rights movement.  There are always going to be those going along with the status quo, especially involving race relations of the times in and around the civil rights movement.  Many white women did NEED those black women to come to work for them for their own reasons, not just to help out those black women who needed a job.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I really agree with everything that everyone above me mentioned... especially the part about how we all know the story of Rosa Parks but never in such detail or especially told in such a novel manner. I think it was pretty amazing how much effort it took to cover up the boycott and it was interesting to think about how the white women covered up the boycotting action of their domestic servants because they knew that &amp;quot;the black women needed those jobs&amp;quot; (page 226). What a great potential sacrifice all parties involved were making in order to accomplish a goal that they wanted. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I also agree with what has been said above about how &amp;quot;helpful&amp;quot; white women were to the civil rights movement. I too am cynical of their real motives for helping and have a sneaky suspicion that they were more motivated by not having to do the work that the black women were do (hence driving them to the jobs that white women avoided) than the innocent desire to help. If black women were fired then white women would have to take up some of the jobs (especially domestic labor)that would not have been acceptable for &amp;quot;respectable women&amp;quot; to work in. Should these women be remembered as helpful or self seeking are personal opinions (I lean more toward self seeking) and it is interesting that they are remembered somewhat fondly here. Perhaps it was an olive branch-remember the white women&amp;#039;s work so they do not get lumped in the same category as the men and maybe they will eventually not have the same beliefs as men? It still strikes me as interesting. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
The line that struck me in this piece was from Mary, &amp;quot;Well, I tell you, Mr. Cliff, I tell you, I learned one thing in my life and that is, when your hand&amp;#039;s in the lion&amp;#039;s mouth, it&amp;#039;s just better to pat it on the head.&amp;quot; (226). The black women knew, like ssellers said, they needed the meager paying jobs in order to survive and it was better to appease the whites than fight them. This also made me relate to Martin Luther King Jr.&amp;#039;s teachings he preached non-violence so in a way the women were acting on his words by not fighting the whites and doing what they needed to in order to get by. This piece made me wonder if without Rosa Parks defiance would MLK Jr. have been as prominent without his speeches on the bus boycott? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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As everyone else has stated, this article was really informative on many levels.  I guess the first thing that struck me was the fact that even though I had heard many times the story of Rosa Parks, it had always been presented that Rosa was just an unsuspecting black woman in the South who was pushed around just one too many times.  I cheered for Rosa standing up to the bigotry.  What I didn’t know was Rosa Parks was no ordinary “typical” black woman.  Instead, she was a Civil Rights activist who stood her ground when her civil liberties were being threatened.  It makes no difference to the circumstances surrounding her arrest and I still cheer her strength, but the facts were never presented completely.  I always wondered how they got that famous picture of the white cop fingerprinting Rosa Parks; now I have some idea.  Second, when learning of the bus boycott, I was never aware of the camaraderie between the black working women and their white employers.  It seems to me that this was due to a combination of things; first the close relationship a number of these women must have had within the household and second the high level of reliability white women had for their help.  EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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Wow, lots of comments on this.  The first thing that struck me was, when Mr. Nixon was trying to get Mrs. Parks out of jail, he needed to call white friends to help him.  The white police officers could just deny him the opportunity to talk to Rosa or to bail her out.  The level of prejudice and discrimination in the south through these years is so deep that it kind of never fails to surprise me.  Just to begin with changing the laws of segregation and discrimination must have seemed like a small first step in light of such major social ignorance and prejudice.  -Erin&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the more interesting in this article was the lengths that the whites went to even when blacks were boycotting the busses.  For example, it says the policemen would give white people tickets for giving blacks rides to and from work because they would not take the busses.  It seems like they were turning on their own race and I am incredibly suprised that they would ticket whites for this.  In addition, it is completely illegal, and there is no law about who you can give rides to.  These white women would not quit giving rides because they needed these women to work on time and the best way for that was to help them out and give them rides.  This seems like one of the few times in history where black and white women bonded together, and white women were indirectly helping the civil rights cause. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I was a little surprised to hear that it wasn&amp;#039;t the boycott that desegregated the Alabama bus system, but the Supreme Court Decision.  Furr&amp;#039;s writing almost makes it seem that the boycott and the court decision were parallel events.  I know that the boycott put an economic hardship on the bus system, but now I realize that may have not been the only goal.  I am sure public attention was just as important.  Do you think that more people were willing to help the boycott knowing that there was a case going to the supreme court?  Do you think the boycott helped the judicial case?  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I was a little surprised to hear that it wasn&amp;#039;t the boycott that desegregated the Alabama bus system, but the Supreme Court Decision.  Furr&amp;#039;s writing almost makes it seem that the boycott and the court decision were parallel events.  I know that the boycott put an economic hardship on the bus system, but now I realize that may have not been the only goal.  I am sure public attention was just as important.  Do you think that more people were willing to help the boycott knowing that there was a case going to the supreme court?  Do you think the boycott helped the judicial case?  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was really enlightening and definitely brought to light another side of the Civil Rights movement (the involvement of white women) that is not often discussed. I think it is necessary to acknowledge that some southern whites really did want to help the Civil Rights movement. I know many of the above posts think that the amount of help received from white women was limited and I agree but I think this article did a good job of showing both sides to white women&amp;#039;s involvement. I can&amp;#039;t imagine that women like Virginia Durr were common it seems much more likely that the norm was closer to the white women who resented any interference with their black maids ability to  clean their houses, the kind of women who passively supported segregation laws.-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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My questions about the articles:  is there any significance in the contrast between the accounts from Parks and Durr? Durr&amp;#039;s recounting seems much more racially charged than Parks. Maybe this has something to do with the historical tendency of African American women to spurn membership in white women&amp;#039;s organizations because they fully recognized the dual nature of their oppression (nevermind the blatant racism of a lot of these women&amp;#039;s groups)? Or does it have something to do with the conflict African American women had with their identities--whether to identify first as women or with their race? Also, from Durr&amp;#039;s account, Parks&amp;#039; husband was the fearful one, afraid of the white retaliation against making her trial into a test case--what was the role of African American women in advancing the cause of civil rights? Is this typical--men fearful because of what little social status they had as men and having that meager little bit to lose if they spoke against segregation? Also, what were the white women of Montgomery who hired African American women as domestic servants so upset about when the mayor issued his plea that they stop driving their maids home? Was it outrage at a man telling them how to run their households or was it something more sinister--perhaps these white women, who relinquished what power they had gained during the Civil War years to return to their idyllic antebellum fantasy worlds, holding onto their status as defined by having African American servants? Were they upset because they saw their retention of black servants as a symbol of their social status within white society? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mirta Vidal Reports on the Rising Consciousness of the Chicana About Her Special Oppression, 1971 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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What caught my &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;attention in this article was the forced sterilization that some Chicanas experienced.  In class I was wondering why somebody would sterilize a woman without her permission, and Vidal gives one reason&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;:  &amp;quot;forced sterilization [is] justified by the viciously racist ideology that the problems of La Raza are caused by Raza women having too many babies.&amp;quot;  So, the procedure was a permanent birth control.  I am hardly pro-abortion, but to have the ability to bear children taken away like that would truly be devastating. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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To go off of what CBrau was saying -- &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I wish I could say that I was surprised by the forced sterilization,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think it comes out of a racist ideology, and the fact that during this time there was a massive inflow of immigrants into the United States. This led to nativism among the Anglo population and fear that their jobs would be taken away. During this time, there was also a lot of scholarship that argued that the Anglo population was having fewer children while Chicana and other Latin American groups continued to have the same number of children, so a fear that the white population would eventually be overtaken existed as well. I think its important to understand the struggles of these women on the three levels: their nationality, the fact that they were workers, and the fact that they were women. Their unique circumstances meant that they specific demands, and I think that the fact that they could recognize this and come together is very powerful. I also think that this is something that is still being dealt with today. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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“Chicana motherhood should not preclude educational, political, social, and economic advancement,” (455).  I felt like the chicana women were making this notion of being oppressed was new and exclusively to them. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Having to choose between motherhood and their own ambitions was not a new idea at all.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Women, of all races, felt like this and had been fighting for it. I don’t mean to demean Latin American women in any way; I merely think there were a little late in this thinking.  Along with this premise of feeling like they were the only ones broken, black women had been facing the same triple oppression “as members of an oppressed nationality, as workers, and as women,” (455). Once again this feeling was nothing new to the world, to the Chicana’s who were just realizing their feeling of adversity, yes, but to other women they were late to the party. The sterilization freaked me out too, that was something I&amp;#039;ve only heard about happening in Africa. Very scary. La Raza means The Race by the way. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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As difficult as it is to beleive this, I agree with Erin.  The forced sterilization in large part came out of racism and oppression.  They are severley oppressed and do not have access to freedoms that would certainly make their lives more manegable.  The americans felt threatened by the massive influx of mexicans and jumped to the conlcusion of forced of forced sterilization as the way to prevent their population from  multiplying.  I wonder if they ever thought this matter through or automatically jumped to thinking forced sterilization was the best way to operate? Obvioiusly, it is not humane.  When it mentions that these Raza women faced triple oppression, it reminded me of the oppression black women were facing.  The Raza women were oppressed because of their nationality, as workers and women.  Then there are the black women who were oppressed as women, the color of their skin, and occasionally in the workplace.  Non-white women are certainly having a difficult time! -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Everyone above has commented on the remark made by Vidal concerning &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;sterilization. Although it seems shocking, this was a common practice throughout the 20th century in most states&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Virgina ranked second among the 50 states for most forced sterilizations on both men and women (it is also good to note that it was not just among minorities either). It is all matter of eugenics and perfecting the human race (it is more familiar in regards to Hitler). I think that this piece is trying to show that women of all races were experiencing some form of oppression and desire for control of their own bodies.  I think it is easy to brush off cases like this when it involves a minority, but it causes one to stop and think, what are the reasons for this need among minorities?   I think it comes back to the idea that people often viewed minorities, especially women, as inferior.  I think that Vidal is trying to show that there is an equal need among Chicanos women for birth control, child care, movement away from racist or sexists practices, etc. that is also common among many white urban women and African Americans. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with abratchi.The Chicanas were vehemently fighting for control over their own bodies, but isn&amp;#039;t that what every woman wants, regardless of race or class? --Anna Holman &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree, but I think it can be extended further than just what every WOMAN wants, and can be broadened to include men as well. No one wants to feel as if they have no control over thier own bodies or life and when that personal sense of control is taken away is when people revolt against their oppressor. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Vidal’s point about Chicanas facing triple discrimination is important, because &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;discrimination is never a simple cut and dry thing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  If you solve the problem of class, that does not solve the problems of gender or race or sexuality.  I think this is what made, and still makes, the push for equal rights so difficult.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;How does one choose what one focuses on in the fight?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  In the Hispanic community, Chicanas were told by Chicano leaders not to join the women’s liberation movement because “it is an ‘Anglo thing’” (455).  Chicanas recognized that women’s liberation was not just for middle class white women, it was for them too.  The men in the community were not offering much support, so Vidal, by connecting “machismo” to Anglo chauvinism, compares Chicanos to white males, and I’m sure that Hispanic men did not want to be connected with the very people they were fighting against.  – Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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This reading is a good reminder that the rights movements were about more than just African Americans and white women, though those are the movements that tend to be recognized the most. In this case, Chicanas were challenging both a racial and sexual social oppression. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think it’s interesting that they were encouraged away from activism because it was considered an “Anglo thing,” at least according to the men who wanted them to stay out it. Considering the first national convention for Raza women was in 1971, how could anyone even have gotten away with that argument, when African Americans had been in the public eye fighting for their social equality for many years&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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We&amp;#039;ve read a bit previously about the double burden of black women, and it seemed to me that this description of triple discrimination is really the same thing. I&amp;#039;m a bit skeptical of the third designation, that of job discrimination--not that it doesn&amp;#039;t exist (for of course it does), but rather because of the implication that this discrimination is only an issue with Chicanas, and it almost seems that Vidal is trying to elevate the issue to seem as if Chicanas are more oppressed than women of other minorities, which is not entirely true (much depends on region, etc). I found Vidal&amp;#039;s arguments much more successful when she focused on the sterilization, an instance of extreme racism and sexism that is specific to the Chicana community. It was interesting to hear some of the same rhetoric that I&amp;#039;ve encountered in feminist arguments published last year, much less 40 years ago. At one point I forgot it was the early seventies altogether!  --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Vidal is simply explaining the obstacles and prejudices Chicanas face. It sounds like she&amp;#039;s asserting their cultural identity and drawing attention to specific ways in which they as women, Chicanas and working class are oppressed or discriminated against and not necessarily comparing this to the tribulations of other women or minorities. I loved that she points out that &amp;#039;machismo&amp;#039; is a product of the cultural introduction of European sex roles to the new world.  I&amp;#039;m always happy to read about all of the civil rights movements inspired by the African American Civil Rights movement. -Erin b&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it interesting when I read pieces about women of different ethnicities speak about women&amp;#039;s rights. A lot of times women of ethnicities other than white were not able to come together in the fight for equal rights with those white women because of the color of their skin. They do seem to have many of the same issues, however. In this piece Mirta Vidal talks about being seen as inferior to the opposite sex, women fought to end all forced sterilizations, and the Chicana women were even concerned about having childcare available to them. I find it so interesting that many blacks and Hispanic women had to form their own women&amp;#039;s groups for equal rights when they were facing many of the same problems that other white women were at the same time. Amy V.&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Sarah about the third form of discrimination, I think that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Vidal is commenting on the exploitation of Latino’s by employers in agriculture. I am not saying that this did not, and does not continue to happen to workers of other races, but I think a large portion of those exploited farm, nursery, orchard etc. workers that were and are  Latino&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Going off of that, I was struck by the trifecta of oppression that Vidal was illustrating. “Raza women suffer a triple form of oppression: as members of an oppressed nationality, as workers and as women” (455). Not only are these women oppressed in these ways, but she explained that they were oppressed within their culture by male chauvinism. Furthermore, she blames this “machismo” on European colonists in what seems like an argument against European Imperialism. I cannot say either way if I agree with that notion because I really don’t know enough about Latino culture prior to European occupation of the America’s, but I would venture to say, from what I know about history, she is probably making a valid point. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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Echoes of the unique situation African American women found themselves in during the movement for women&amp;#039;s suffrage--spearheaded by middle class white women--who oftentimes felt little to no sympathy for the movement. This alienation experienced by Chicanas and other minority groups might explain why so much top-down reform legislation has failed in this country to date. Her argument against machismo and its origins is interesting, although I&amp;#039;m not sure how factually-based they are--I am unaware of how true statement that &amp;quot;before the Europeans came to this part of the world women enjoyed a position of equality with men.&amp;quot; (456) -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;More Than a Lady&amp;quot; Ruby Doris Smith Robinson and Black Women&amp;#039;s Leadership in the SNCC, Cynthia Fleming ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Ruby Doris Smith Robinson commanded attention to herself and her affiliations like a man would. My favorite comment seems to sum up Robinson, “she had 100 percent effective shit detector,” (552). I believe this makes her a very intimidating figure to men and women alike, that’s saying something during a time when women and African American’s were both oppressed. Robinson may have been a very intimidating woman, but at the same time she didn’t ask for recognition. I suspect that she was such a strong woman that she needed no approval from anyone. To a degree I understand this because she didn’t want to make a big deal out of the fact that she was a woman running the SNCC, but I think that she should have realized that some recognition would have further propelled the organization too. Being the head of SNCC and an imitating figure, Rob was “accepted as one of the boys,” (555). I don’t think that this was a good or a bad thing. She commanded the authority and attention as a man, but I think she unconsciously lost some of her femininity too. She must have been torn with her standings, she wanted to be taken seriously like a man but at the same time she keep up her appearance, retaining some of her femininity. How could she have been happy? I feel like Robinson was fighting a battle within herself between being a strong leader: a manly figure and being a sensitive mothering figure, like she is biologically programmed to be. A tough choice for sure. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It bothered me that the women activists were attributed male qualities just because they didn&amp;#039;t completely mold to the feminine ideals of the time. As the article stated, Robinson still completely embraced her femininity; she still took great care that her appearance and clothing were very ladylike &amp;amp; proper, even when shipping off to jail.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; If she didn&amp;#039;t truly embrace who she was as a woman, she wouldn&amp;#039;t have cared enough to do this. It also disturbed me that since Robinson&amp;#039;s voice was powerful and commanding, it was automatically compared to a man&amp;#039;s voice. If anything is aggressive and powerful, then it &amp;#039;&amp;#039;must&amp;#039;&amp;#039; belong to a man, and consequently must be unnatural for a woman to possess. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Robinson obviously found her passion within the civil rights movement, and it&amp;#039;s sad that she didn&amp;#039;t live to see all the progress that&amp;#039;s been made. The fact that, as a woman, she had to continue to justify her place within the leadership of the movement betrays how pervasive the white, middle class ideal of woman as submissive housewife became. As the author notes, Robinson&amp;#039;s actions &amp;quot;fit comfortably into an established tradition of black female assertiveness&amp;quot; (pg 557), a trait we&amp;#039;ve seen in several other readings. But in this era, black women were told to be more &amp;quot;feminine&amp;quot; when they tried to speak out or organize. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ideals, quite obviously, are not one size fits all.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Anna&amp;#039;s comment, I do not think it is necessarily a bad thing that Robinson was attributed male qualities. The action of gifting a woman masculine qualities as a result of her endeavors or opinions is something that we have seen time and time again. Rather than looking at it in a derogatory light, maybe we should embrace it for all it is worth because like Mary Ann said, she is a strong individual. Even today, women struggle  male dominated in male dominated environments and the hard work that requires them to get there. Case in point: the US military or the US Naval Academy.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;Polishing Brown Diamonds&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;More than a Lady&amp;quot; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Outside the fact that Ebony magazine wanted to make money and focused more on the middle class, there was an attempt to change the stereotypical views of the black women from the Aunt Jemima look to a beautiful “brown-skinned” women.  I think what Laila Haidarali was trying to show how &amp;quot;Ebony&amp;quot; tried to influence perceptions through this ideal “brown-skinned” woman.  The charm schools weren’t just creating models but a self-confident woman who may not become a model but was ready to face the work force with less fears of knowing the right thing to say or the appropriate attire for the job.  An interesting example she used  was Watson’s Charm Clinic, that if you put too much make-up on you could look like you were going to a nightclub not to work.  An important point made in Watson’s address was that one’s appearance reflects one’s abilities.  These options led women to believe that they would improve the view of a black woman and bring her more social mobility.  With all of that being said, where does the dark-skinned black woman fit in?  As I read “More than a lady” by Fleming, they seemed contradictory.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;What women activists did defied this ideal notion of a woman black or white.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  But what is interesting was when I read how a black female civil rights worker was demonstrating and was grabbed and slapped in the face by a cop and his response grouped all black people together.  If she was a white activist, she probably wouldn’t have been slapped around or beaten as these black women were.  To the cop, she was black and he didn’t care if you were man or woman.   --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I really was interested by the experience of the black model who was too light skinned to represent the African Americans, but too dark to represent the whites. That is just ridiculous to me in today&amp;#039;s terms, especially since in black and white print you probably wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to differentiate between whether she was white or light skinned black or a subtle shade of orange. It&amp;#039;s not often that you think about the hardships of the models in the modeling industry, but it was enlighening to read about this experience of exclusion solely because you happened to be too light skinned, but not light skinned enough. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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== Laila Haidarali, &amp;quot;Polishing Brown Diamonds,&amp;quot; African American Women, Popular Magazines, and Modeling==&lt;br /&gt;
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I was interested to read about magazines lightening the skin tones of models for white magazines. I’m far from surprised, even if I hadn’t heard of it being done before reading this article. It’s sort of a way to keep that “exotic” look, yet with more acceptable skin color. What’s most interesting to me is that it is still goes on today. For instance, check out a comparison of [http://entertainment.msn.co.nz/img/blog/aug08/blog080808_beyonce2.jpg Beyonce] in a Paris L’Oreal ad to what she actually looks like. As if Beyonce didn’t already have fairly light skin. I’d say she probably fits into the “Brownskin” the article talks about. So, how would you like to explain yourself Paris L’Oreal? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It was great to read this article for many reasons; it was fascinating and enlightening. One of the things I found the most interesting about it, though, was how often &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Haidarali emphasized the fact that the ideal was, yes, feminine, hardworking and family oriented, but also heterosexual.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think in some of the articles we have read this semester they do not reiterate this point as much as Haidarali because they think it is understood. While I never really thought post-war America was open to homosexuality, I appreciate her continually reminding us that sexism and racism were not the only discriminations of the day. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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When this article spoke of &amp;quot;Brownskin&amp;quot; models, I was not aware of how racially ambiguous they appeared. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;[http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1364/1294691395_9722feeb99.jpg Sylvia Fitt]&amp;#039;&amp;#039;--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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This article though eye-opening was not incredibly surprising. It is sad to see that though blacks were being accepted in some aspects of life and society, they process of &amp;quot;fitting in&amp;quot; or perhaps aesthetic assimilation is something that will never come to fruition.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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Taylor and Anna thanks for the links! The Beyonce one is really creepy--even the amount of touching up they do to so-called &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; women&amp;#039;s photos is enough to set me off, but she&amp;#039;s really a totally different shade! And I would have assumed that Sylvia Fitt was Caucasian, except that the picture is in Jet! I knew to some extent that darker-skinned models and those with what are considered &amp;quot;African&amp;quot; features (as opposed to &amp;quot;European,&amp;quot; I assume) were discriminated against in the modeling industry, and this article definitely reinforced that, but the racial ambiguity of these &amp;quot;Brownskin&amp;quot; models is really something else. I also was very intrigued by the description of the &amp;quot;What Happened to the Brandford Models?&amp;quot; article, and how these models were presented as not only body or beauty ideals, but also as models of femininity and motherhood and all that &amp;quot;cult of domesticity&amp;quot; business. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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Usually, I am against women feeling as though they must live up to ideals put forth by magazines. However, in this case, I somewhat agree with the idea of using &amp;quot;Brownskin&amp;quot; models to boost the reputation of the African American woman. The magazine &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ebony&amp;#039;&amp;#039;depicted the African American models as being the figureheads for African American. The images of these women created a new social path for African American women to aspire to. Many regular African American women dealt with their own problems, mostly caused by society&amp;#039;s view of them. They dealt with discrimination, among many other prejudices and the fact that these models could raise awareness of the potential for African American to be great, was definitely a feat in itself. Although the idea of models was great, it also had its downfalls. The main downfall is that this idea created by the models sets unrealistic expectations for regular/everyday African American women. What if a Black woman couldn&amp;#039;t live up to the standards set by &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ebony&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Magazine? Then, she was back to square one; she was struggling for acceptance in a society where acceptance was non-existent, except in the magazine world. --- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;We Marched for Our Rights,&amp;quot; Rev. Naomi Craig ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The last line of this article struck me the most, &amp;quot;I still have a piece that is missing in my life because I never got to really know him like I would have wanted to.&amp;quot; If this was the start of the article or I had missed something, I would have thought she was talking about a father, a brother, a lover...someone that she would have had a close personal connection with that ended to soon. I certainly would not have expected her to be talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This line, I think, shows how deeply MLK inspired not only African-Americans, but all Americans.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; His assassination was something personal. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found the last part of this article the most powerful, especially the part where Craig discussed the anger of the black community and how they lashed out against the white community. &amp;quot;Black people were running through the streets, just tearing up everything; they were so mad with everybody&amp;quot;Even as far away as Rhode Island Martin Luther Kings life and ultimately his death had a profound impact on people especially those that had the opportunity to see him. Her statement about the anger of the community as well as her love and admiration of King really articulated the strong range of emotions felt by people after MLK was assassinated. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was really inspiring to me and also showed me the true difference between the North and South, it was not something we just read about, it was a reality. Naomi Craig was scared for her son and daughter&amp;#039;s welfare but never stopped them from growing into the people they wanted to be, amongst all the racial differences she let them attend school in the South and travel to a place that appeared to be on a different continent, not states inside the United States. I also wanted to note on the line she stated, &amp;quot;I had never been around so many Blacks before; I thought it was wonderful. I felt they were all so pretty, all different colors.&amp;quot; That was the most inspiring line for me, Mrs. Craig saw beyond first appearances she believed color was beautiful why could America not do the same? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I was going to quote that same like Megan did! I found it so interesting that she commented on the various skin tones of the other African-Americans at her daughter&amp;#039;s school. You always hear of black and white, not normally of all the varying skin tones.  Her reasoning for not protesting the Vietnam war was admirable. &amp;quot;How could I protest it, when he was already in there and his mother was heartbroken. I couldn&amp;#039;t protest. One woman protesting, making a mother feel her son was over there in vain.&amp;quot;  I&amp;#039;m sure there were many others who feel that way, as I feel many people today feel that way about our current wars in the Middle East... Her reactions to MLK Jr&amp;#039;s death was felt by many across the nation as well I&amp;#039;m sure. &amp;quot;Here was a man who stood for beauty. He stood for everybody. He didn&amp;#039;t just fight for Blacks, he fought for anyone who needed rights.&amp;quot;  Such a lasting impact one individual could make on an entire nation.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked reading this piece on Naomi Craig. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I love reading personal stories of people who actually got to experience what we learn about in class.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Mrs.Craig&amp;#039;s point of view was a unique one because she was from the North. She said she felt naive. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I wonder if a lot of black people from the North felt naive that they didn&amp;#039;t really know how bad it really was in the South.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; There were two parts that struck me in particular. One was when she was talking about the war in Vietnam. She said that even though she didn&amp;#039;t agree with the war she didn&amp;#039;t protest it either because she felt bad for those soldiers who went in and for their mothers. This was interesting because she gave an African American view of the Vietnam war. I also liked the part about when she went to Washington DC for the March on Washington. She said, &amp;quot;Look, this is history. We need to be in this.&amp;quot; Her desire to be a part of this historical day and event reminded me of how I think a lot of black Americans and even white Americans felt about the inauguration of President Obama. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Rev. Naomi Craig’s interview was quite interesting. We hear and read so much about the Southern African Americans during this time; it is nice to have a perspective of a Northern African American.  I was touched by the same section as Megan and Christine. Craig’s description of her naivety of the south and how beautiful it was to see so many black people in one place at the college  was touching. I was also intrigued by her comments on finding employment and searching for a home. Craig explains “here I was dressed lovely, thinking that was the first step. And here was some dowdy, ugly woman telling me I couldn&amp;#039;t have a job.” Illustrating that during the depression era there were limited jobs and even further limitations for African American women. Her description of the trouble she faced buying a house in Rhode Island was kind of heart breaking. I couldn’t imagine getting my hopes up in a phone conversation with a realtor just to have him see the color of my skin and tell me there are no houses available. She couldn&amp;#039;t even hold her own mortgage, she had to have a white man hold it! This just proves that it is a great misconception that racial discrimination only took place in the South.-Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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I have never really connected the Vietnam War with the Civil Rights movement before.  I know that many groups like the Black Panthers were against it, but they were only part of it.  I would think that the Vietnam would take away momentum from the Civil Rights movement, as it was more than just a race issue.  Is it possible to protest a war from just a view on how it is racist?  It seems to me that would take away from both the Civil Rights and the anti-war cause.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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How different was the North from the South that an African American woman, obviously intelligent, wouldn&amp;#039;t know much more about the South than that there was &amp;quot;unrest?&amp;quot; Ditto for not knowing about MLK? Raises some questions about how broad the support for the Civil Rights Movement was outside of the South, even within the African American community. Maybe this has something to do with Craig being more or less middle class from what I have read--she marched on Washington for &amp;quot;better jobs.&amp;quot; Also, it was curious to read that, like with Parks&amp;#039; husband, he feared trouble if they participated openly in the March while she was willing to be in it and &amp;quot;a part of history.&amp;quot; Curious that she would say that she always knew that her son would be alright, even thought it was her daughter that was three years his junior and graduated at the same time as him. What does this mean insofar as the perpetuation of gender roles and assumptions within middle class Northern African American families? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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To me this interview told a realistic story of several important themes we have been learning. I agree with everyone else that one of the big themes was when she described the North being so much different than the South.  Although desegregation was starting to happen, this interview shows how it was happening even slower in the South. I feel like the moral of her story was how unfair everything was for blacks. Her story also made me realize how much courage it took to make the decision to  go out and protest for rights in a dangerous social environment.  This was a strong woman who deserves credit for standing by her beliefs in a time of oppression. Her story is just one of many who had to deal with the struggle for Civil Rights in our country who were just trying to make a decent living. Learning from personal interviews like Naomi Crag&amp;#039;s really have made me appreciate the level  of equality we have today. --David Fitch&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_12_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 12 Questions/Comments</title>
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				<updated>2010-04-08T03:45:17Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Civil Rights Activists, Rosa Parks and Virginia Foster Durr */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Civil Rights Activists, Rosa Parks and Virginia Foster Durr ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Everybody knew everbody else was lying, but to save face, they had to lie&amp;quot; (p. 225).  We have all heard the story of Rosa Parks and the bus boycotts, just with less detail.  I was definitely not expecting the role that white women played.  I suppose it makes sense to focus on those who were being directly affected by the Civil Rights Movement, but perhaps these boycotts would not have been as successful without the help of various white women.  They generously offered rides to black women to and from work despite the chance of getting a ticket, something that could have helped keep the morale up for the strike.  White women also understood the important of keeping black women&amp;#039;s involvement in the boycotts a secret.  It was obvious that these black women needed their jobs and being a part of the boycott would surely get them fired.  I&amp;#039;m just wondering if all the white women who offered a ride or kept a secret agreed with the boycotts or even with the Civil Rights Movement?  Durr is clearly biased in favor of civil rights, but maybe some women were just being nice and did not agree with civil rights or even understand what the women were boycotting against. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed this article because it shows the role that white women played in the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. It is interesting because the initial thought one generally has when thinking of the 1950s South is the hatred whites had towards African Americans and the fear that caused in the African American community. However, what this article illustrates is the fact that many white women were as active in the Civil Rights movement as they could be. I seriously doubt that there are statistics regarding the number of white women who helped Black women in the bus boycott because of the fear that was in both parties. It is interesting because the white women would lie and say that they didn’t support the boycott or help the black women. And the black women would lie and say that they were not participating, they just needed to take care of a sick child (or something like that). I am curious about how widespread this actually was, but I guess we will never know because of how secretive these women had to be. I am curious if the husbands of these white women were aware of their participation and support. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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What Rosa Parks did was defy a social norm, that blacks were supposed to move when whites told them to do so.  To our generation that seems ignorant but I remember my mother saying that she never went to school with an African American and that it was just expected you didn’t mix the two.  My dad said they had two theaters one for blacks and one for whites but they never thought twice about it.  Rosa Parks along with other civil rights activists were going against these unjust socially accepted policies that had been legalized.  The idea of integration seemed like a social taboo and if you crossed it then you were looked at unjustly as well.  I think this is why the white women giving rides kept it secret.  The black women may have feared loosing their jobs if their employers knew they were involved in the boycott.   -- Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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While I read this excerpt, I could only imagine Rosa Parks demeanor during her ordeal on the bus. She seemed so calm to publicly break the segregation laws for the bus. I&amp;#039;m sure her demeanor was quite calm and collected, with Parks being perfectly  content to say no. The police arrested Rosa Parks on &amp;quot;suspicion,&amp;quot; and even with that, Parks was unsure of what she was being arrested for. It just surprised me how corrupt the police were at the time; they did everything within their power, and even beyond that, to ensure that life was made harder for African Americans. Did nobody see a problem with that? Or did people just accept it? Also, what happened to white people who had dissenting opinions about the corruptness and the unfair treatment of African Americans at the time? I feel like nobody really spoke up about the injustices that were occurring, for fear of what might happen to them. I think it is interesting how the white women actually believed the African American women and men about why they were walking instead of riding the bus; it was because they were truly boycotting, but the boycotters lied to keep their jobs. &amp;quot;The white people really believed that. They didn&amp;#039;t see through it all.&amp;quot;(P. 225) Both the whites and African Americans were working together to help the boycott, yet neither group knew they were working in conjunction with the other. This was maybe the first time that whites and Blacks were working together for a common cause: civil rights. However, neither group even knew it. --- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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Rosa was sitting in her right section, the back section that was reserved to the blacks, and was then asked to move. I really don’t understand what gave the bus driver the right to ask her to move. She had done everything that was required of her and she hadn’t broken any rules. “After I had paid my fare and occupied a seat, I didn’t think I should have to give it up,” (222). Rosa was in the “right” section, had paid her fare, and was sitting down (she had paid for her seat). Just because white people came onto the bus and didn’t have a seat, the black people shouldn’t have been made to move. If black people had come onto the bus and didn’t have seats, they would have been made to stand in the aisle, so why shouldn’t have the white people been made too? Of course I am thinking in modern terms probably, it just seems so unfair. Just like the black and white people did, I would have lied about who was a part of bus boycott. I can understand why a majority of the white community would have lied for the black participates too. This way the black servants wouldn’t be locked up and they could continue to provide their services to the white families that employed them and in turn they would continue to receive a weekly check. Both parties would benefit from the unsaid agreement of lying for the other. “Everybody knew everybody else was lying,” (225). -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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Like several people above stated, I really liked the camaraderie that developed between some black and white women during the bus boycott. Although I&amp;#039;m sure this wasn&amp;#039;t the case for every white woman in Montgomery, many of the white employers of black domestics pretended not to realize that their employees were participating in the boycott. This seems to me whatever facade the white women put up was just a thin disguise for the support of integration. Otherwise, why else would the women give their employees rides to work, or excuse frequent tardiness? Like the article stated, everyone knew everyone else was lying about their participation or support of the Montgomery bus boycott.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked how Anna referred to the relationship between black and white women as a camaraderie.  I think that really captures the essence of this piece. I think another important thing that this piece does is show how black women HAD to work, yet they also felt that they had to participate in the civil rights movement if they wanted things to change.  The relationship that developed between white and black women in this particular case is quite remarkable, but it makes me wonder, is this type of thing common, or is this just a special case?   The civil rights movement seems to be flagged with a series of things that make one wonder, why did that happen?  Rosa Parks did not appear to be the type of woman to get arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus, yet she was.  It also appears unlikely that white women would help black women, especially, I would think, out of fear.  Yet, these things happened, as this piece showed.  It helped me realize that there was more the civil rights movements than blacks fighting for black rights. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I have to add my two cents to the conversation about the relationship between white and black women during the bus boycott. A few people have pointed out that the situation was a positive one, a time when white women willingly helped their black employees support the bus boycott even if neither party directly admitted to it. Maybe I&amp;#039;m just more cynical, but I don&amp;#039;t believe that most of the white women wanted to be helping the civil rights movement. These were not women who had showed any interest in equality before the boycott, and the &amp;quot;roar of indignation&amp;quot; over the issue only came when the mayor suggested women stop employing their black maids. In my view, Montgomery&amp;#039;s white women were far more influenced by the domestic ideals of the day than civil rights protests. Black servants kept white homes neat and white children out of the mud so that white women could look their judgmental neighbors in the eye. Had the black women stopped coming to work, white wives and mothers would have had to do complete the never ending list of domestic chores required of &amp;quot;respectable women&amp;quot; themselves or risk letting some things fall through the cracks and losing some of the esteem of their neighbors. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann about not believing that most of the white women wanted to help in the civil rights movement.  There are always going to be those going along with the status quo, especially involving race relations of the times in and around the civil rights movement.  Many white women did NEED those black women to come to work for them for their own reasons, not just to help out those black women who needed a job.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I really agree with everything that everyone above me mentioned... especially the part about how we all know the story of Rosa Parks but never in such detail or especially told in such a novel manner. I think it was pretty amazing how much effort it took to cover up the boycott and it was interesting to think about how the white women covered up the boycotting action of their domestic servants because they knew that &amp;quot;the black women needed those jobs&amp;quot; (page 226). What a great potential sacrifice all parties involved were making in order to accomplish a goal that they wanted. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I also agree with what has been said above about how &amp;quot;helpful&amp;quot; white women were to the civil rights movement. I too am cynical of their real motives for helping and have a sneaky suspicion that they were more motivated by not having to do the work that the black women were do (hence driving them to the jobs that white women avoided) than the innocent desire to help. If black women were fired then white women would have to take up some of the jobs (especially domestic labor)that would not have been acceptable for &amp;quot;respectable women&amp;quot; to work in. Should these women be remembered as helpful or self seeking are personal opinions (I lean more toward self seeking) and it is interesting that they are remembered somewhat fondly here. Perhaps it was an olive branch-remember the white women&amp;#039;s work so they do not get lumped in the same category as the men and maybe they will eventually not have the same beliefs as men? It still strikes me as interesting. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
The line that struck me in this piece was from Mary, &amp;quot;Well, I tell you, Mr. Cliff, I tell you, I learned one thing in my life and that is, when your hand&amp;#039;s in the lion&amp;#039;s mouth, it&amp;#039;s just better to pat it on the head.&amp;quot; (226). The black women knew, like ssellers said, they needed the meager paying jobs in order to survive and it was better to appease the whites than fight them. This also made me relate to Martin Luther King Jr.&amp;#039;s teachings he preached non-violence so in a way the women were acting on his words by not fighting the whites and doing what they needed to in order to get by. This piece made me wonder if without Rosa Parks defiance would MLK Jr. have been as prominent without his speeches on the bus boycott? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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As everyone else has stated, this article was really informative on many levels.  I guess the first thing that struck me was the fact that even though I had heard many times the story of Rosa Parks, it had always been presented that Rosa was just an unsuspecting black woman in the South who was pushed around just one too many times.  I cheered for Rosa standing up to the bigotry.  What I didn’t know was Rosa Parks was no ordinary “typical” black woman.  Instead, she was a Civil Rights activist who stood her ground when her civil liberties were being threatened.  It makes no difference to the circumstances surrounding her arrest and I still cheer her strength, but the facts were never presented completely.  I always wondered how they got that famous picture of the white cop fingerprinting Rosa Parks; now I have some idea.  Second, when learning of the bus boycott, I was never aware of the camaraderie between the black working women and their white employers.  It seems to me that this was due to a combination of things; first the close relationship a number of these women must have had within the household and second the high level of reliability white women had for their help.  EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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Wow, lots of comments on this.  The first thing that struck me was, when Mr. Nixon was trying to get Mrs. Parks out of jail, he needed to call white friends to help him.  The white police officers could just deny him the opportunity to talk to Rosa or to bail her out.  The level of prejudice and discrimination in the south through these years is so deep that it kind of never fails to surprise me.  Just to begin with changing the laws of segregation and discrimination must have seemed like a small first step in light of such major social ignorance and prejudice.  -Erin&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the more interesting in this article was the lengths that the whites went to even when blacks were boycotting the busses.  For example, it says the policemen would give white people tickets for giving blacks rides to and from work because they would not take the busses.  It seems like they were turning on their own race and I am incredibly suprised that they would ticket whites for this.  In addition, it is completely illegal, and there is no law about who you can give rides to.  These white women would not quit giving rides because they needed these women to work on time and the best way for that was to help them out and give them rides.  This seems like one of the few times in history where black and white women bonded together, and white women were indirectly helping the civil rights cause. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I was a little surprised to hear that it wasn&amp;#039;t the boycott that desegregated the Alabama bus system, but the Supreme Court Decision.  Furr&amp;#039;s writing almost makes it seem that the boycott and the court decision were parallel events.  I know that the boycott put an economic hardship on the bus system, but now I realize that may have not been the only goal.  I am sure public attention was just as important.  Do you think that more people were willing to help the boycott knowing that there was a case going to the supreme court?  Do you think the boycott helped the judicial case?  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I was a little surprised to hear that it wasn&amp;#039;t the boycott that desegregated the Alabama bus system, but the Supreme Court Decision.  Furr&amp;#039;s writing almost makes it seem that the boycott and the court decision were parallel events.  I know that the boycott put an economic hardship on the bus system, but now I realize that may have not been the only goal.  I am sure public attention was just as important.  Do you think that more people were willing to help the boycott knowing that there was a case going to the supreme court?  Do you think the boycott helped the judicial case?  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was really enlightening and definitely brought to light another side of the Civil Rights movement (the involvement of white women) that is not often discussed. I think it is necessary to acknowledge that some southern whites really did want to help the Civil Rights movement. I know many of the above posts think that the amount of help received from white women was limited and I agree but I think this article did a good job of showing both sides to white women&amp;#039;s involvement. I can&amp;#039;t imagine that women like Virginia Durr were common it seems much more likely that the norm was closer to the white women who resented any interference with their black maids ability to  clean their houses, the kind of women who passively supported segregation laws.-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mirta Vidal Reports on the Rising Consciousness of the Chicana About Her Special Oppression, 1971 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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What caught my &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;attention in this article was the forced sterilization that some Chicanas experienced.  In class I was wondering why somebody would sterilize a woman without her permission, and Vidal gives one reason&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;:  &amp;quot;forced sterilization [is] justified by the viciously racist ideology that the problems of La Raza are caused by Raza women having too many babies.&amp;quot;  So, the procedure was a permanent birth control.  I am hardly pro-abortion, but to have the ability to bear children taken away like that would truly be devastating. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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To go off of what CBrau was saying -- &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I wish I could say that I was surprised by the forced sterilization,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think it comes out of a racist ideology, and the fact that during this time there was a massive inflow of immigrants into the United States. This led to nativism among the Anglo population and fear that their jobs would be taken away. During this time, there was also a lot of scholarship that argued that the Anglo population was having fewer children while Chicana and other Latin American groups continued to have the same number of children, so a fear that the white population would eventually be overtaken existed as well. I think its important to understand the struggles of these women on the three levels: their nationality, the fact that they were workers, and the fact that they were women. Their unique circumstances meant that they specific demands, and I think that the fact that they could recognize this and come together is very powerful. I also think that this is something that is still being dealt with today. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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“Chicana motherhood should not preclude educational, political, social, and economic advancement,” (455).  I felt like the chicana women were making this notion of being oppressed was new and exclusively to them. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Having to choose between motherhood and their own ambitions was not a new idea at all.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Women, of all races, felt like this and had been fighting for it. I don’t mean to demean Latin American women in any way; I merely think there were a little late in this thinking.  Along with this premise of feeling like they were the only ones broken, black women had been facing the same triple oppression “as members of an oppressed nationality, as workers, and as women,” (455). Once again this feeling was nothing new to the world, to the Chicana’s who were just realizing their feeling of adversity, yes, but to other women they were late to the party. The sterilization freaked me out too, that was something I&amp;#039;ve only heard about happening in Africa. Very scary. La Raza means The Race by the way. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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As difficult as it is to beleive this, I agree with Erin.  The forced sterilization in large part came out of racism and oppression.  They are severley oppressed and do not have access to freedoms that would certainly make their lives more manegable.  The americans felt threatened by the massive influx of mexicans and jumped to the conlcusion of forced of forced sterilization as the way to prevent their population from  multiplying.  I wonder if they ever thought this matter through or automatically jumped to thinking forced sterilization was the best way to operate? Obvioiusly, it is not humane.  When it mentions that these Raza women faced triple oppression, it reminded me of the oppression black women were facing.  The Raza women were oppressed because of their nationality, as workers and women.  Then there are the black women who were oppressed as women, the color of their skin, and occasionally in the workplace.  Non-white women are certainly having a difficult time! -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Everyone above has commented on the remark made by Vidal concerning &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;sterilization. Although it seems shocking, this was a common practice throughout the 20th century in most states&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Virgina ranked second among the 50 states for most forced sterilizations on both men and women (it is also good to note that it was not just among minorities either). It is all matter of eugenics and perfecting the human race (it is more familiar in regards to Hitler). I think that this piece is trying to show that women of all races were experiencing some form of oppression and desire for control of their own bodies.  I think it is easy to brush off cases like this when it involves a minority, but it causes one to stop and think, what are the reasons for this need among minorities?   I think it comes back to the idea that people often viewed minorities, especially women, as inferior.  I think that Vidal is trying to show that there is an equal need among Chicanos women for birth control, child care, movement away from racist or sexists practices, etc. that is also common among many white urban women and African Americans. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with abratchi.The Chicanas were vehemently fighting for control over their own bodies, but isn&amp;#039;t that what every woman wants, regardless of race or class? --Anna Holman &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree, but I think it can be extended further than just what every WOMAN wants, and can be broadened to include men as well. No one wants to feel as if they have no control over thier own bodies or life and when that personal sense of control is taken away is when people revolt against their oppressor. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Vidal’s point about Chicanas facing triple discrimination is important, because &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;discrimination is never a simple cut and dry thing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  If you solve the problem of class, that does not solve the problems of gender or race or sexuality.  I think this is what made, and still makes, the push for equal rights so difficult.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;How does one choose what one focuses on in the fight?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  In the Hispanic community, Chicanas were told by Chicano leaders not to join the women’s liberation movement because “it is an ‘Anglo thing’” (455).  Chicanas recognized that women’s liberation was not just for middle class white women, it was for them too.  The men in the community were not offering much support, so Vidal, by connecting “machismo” to Anglo chauvinism, compares Chicanos to white males, and I’m sure that Hispanic men did not want to be connected with the very people they were fighting against.  – Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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This reading is a good reminder that the rights movements were about more than just African Americans and white women, though those are the movements that tend to be recognized the most. In this case, Chicanas were challenging both a racial and sexual social oppression. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think it’s interesting that they were encouraged away from activism because it was considered an “Anglo thing,” at least according to the men who wanted them to stay out it. Considering the first national convention for Raza women was in 1971, how could anyone even have gotten away with that argument, when African Americans had been in the public eye fighting for their social equality for many years&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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We&amp;#039;ve read a bit previously about the double burden of black women, and it seemed to me that this description of triple discrimination is really the same thing. I&amp;#039;m a bit skeptical of the third designation, that of job discrimination--not that it doesn&amp;#039;t exist (for of course it does), but rather because of the implication that this discrimination is only an issue with Chicanas, and it almost seems that Vidal is trying to elevate the issue to seem as if Chicanas are more oppressed than women of other minorities, which is not entirely true (much depends on region, etc). I found Vidal&amp;#039;s arguments much more successful when she focused on the sterilization, an instance of extreme racism and sexism that is specific to the Chicana community. It was interesting to hear some of the same rhetoric that I&amp;#039;ve encountered in feminist arguments published last year, much less 40 years ago. At one point I forgot it was the early seventies altogether!  --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Vidal is simply explaining the obstacles and prejudices Chicanas face. It sounds like she&amp;#039;s asserting their cultural identity and drawing attention to specific ways in which they as women, Chicanas and working class are oppressed or discriminated against and not necessarily comparing this to the tribulations of other women or minorities. I loved that she points out that &amp;#039;machismo&amp;#039; is a product of the cultural introduction of European sex roles to the new world.  I&amp;#039;m always happy to read about all of the civil rights movements inspired by the African American Civil Rights movement. -Erin b&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it interesting when I read pieces about women of different ethnicities speak about women&amp;#039;s rights. A lot of times women of ethnicities other than white were not able to come together in the fight for equal rights with those white women because of the color of their skin. They do seem to have many of the same issues, however. In this piece Mirta Vidal talks about being seen as inferior to the opposite sex, women fought to end all forced sterilizations, and the Chicana women were even concerned about having childcare available to them. I find it so interesting that many blacks and Hispanic women had to form their own women&amp;#039;s groups for equal rights when they were facing many of the same problems that other white women were at the same time. Amy V.&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Sarah about the third form of discrimination, I think that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Vidal is commenting on the exploitation of Latino’s by employers in agriculture. I am not saying that this did not, and does not continue to happen to workers of other races, but I think a large portion of those exploited farm, nursery, orchard etc. workers that were and are  Latino&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Going off of that, I was struck by the trifecta of oppression that Vidal was illustrating. “Raza women suffer a triple form of oppression: as members of an oppressed nationality, as workers and as women” (455). Not only are these women oppressed in these ways, but she explained that they were oppressed within their culture by male chauvinism. Furthermore, she blames this “machismo” on European colonists in what seems like an argument against European Imperialism. I cannot say either way if I agree with that notion because I really don’t know enough about Latino culture prior to European occupation of the America’s, but I would venture to say, from what I know about history, she is probably making a valid point. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;More Than a Lady&amp;quot; Ruby Doris Smith Robinson and Black Women&amp;#039;s Leadership in the SNCC, Cynthia Fleming ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Ruby Doris Smith Robinson commanded attention to herself and her affiliations like a man would. My favorite comment seems to sum up Robinson, “she had 100 percent effective shit detector,” (552). I believe this makes her a very intimidating figure to men and women alike, that’s saying something during a time when women and African American’s were both oppressed. Robinson may have been a very intimidating woman, but at the same time she didn’t ask for recognition. I suspect that she was such a strong woman that she needed no approval from anyone. To a degree I understand this because she didn’t want to make a big deal out of the fact that she was a woman running the SNCC, but I think that she should have realized that some recognition would have further propelled the organization too. Being the head of SNCC and an imitating figure, Rob was “accepted as one of the boys,” (555). I don’t think that this was a good or a bad thing. She commanded the authority and attention as a man, but I think she unconsciously lost some of her femininity too. She must have been torn with her standings, she wanted to be taken seriously like a man but at the same time she keep up her appearance, retaining some of her femininity. How could she have been happy? I feel like Robinson was fighting a battle within herself between being a strong leader: a manly figure and being a sensitive mothering figure, like she is biologically programmed to be. A tough choice for sure. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It bothered me that the women activists were attributed male qualities just because they didn&amp;#039;t completely mold to the feminine ideals of the time. As the article stated, Robinson still completely embraced her femininity; she still took great care that her appearance and clothing were very ladylike &amp;amp; proper, even when shipping off to jail.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; If she didn&amp;#039;t truly embrace who she was as a woman, she wouldn&amp;#039;t have cared enough to do this. It also disturbed me that since Robinson&amp;#039;s voice was powerful and commanding, it was automatically compared to a man&amp;#039;s voice. If anything is aggressive and powerful, then it &amp;#039;&amp;#039;must&amp;#039;&amp;#039; belong to a man, and consequently must be unnatural for a woman to possess. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Robinson obviously found her passion within the civil rights movement, and it&amp;#039;s sad that she didn&amp;#039;t live to see all the progress that&amp;#039;s been made. The fact that, as a woman, she had to continue to justify her place within the leadership of the movement betrays how pervasive the white, middle class ideal of woman as submissive housewife became. As the author notes, Robinson&amp;#039;s actions &amp;quot;fit comfortably into an established tradition of black female assertiveness&amp;quot; (pg 557), a trait we&amp;#039;ve seen in several other readings. But in this era, black women were told to be more &amp;quot;feminine&amp;quot; when they tried to speak out or organize. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ideals, quite obviously, are not one size fits all.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Anna&amp;#039;s comment, I do not think it is necessarily a bad thing that Robinson was attributed male qualities. The action of gifting a woman masculine qualities as a result of her endeavors or opinions is something that we have seen time and time again. Rather than looking at it in a derogatory light, maybe we should embrace it for all it is worth because like Mary Ann said, she is a strong individual. Even today, women struggle  male dominated in male dominated environments and the hard work that requires them to get there. Case in point: the US military or the US Naval Academy.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;Polishing Brown Diamonds&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;More than a Lady&amp;quot; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Outside the fact that Ebony magazine wanted to make money and focused more on the middle class, there was an attempt to change the stereotypical views of the black women from the Aunt Jemima look to a beautiful “brown-skinned” women.  I think what Laila Haidarali was trying to show how &amp;quot;Ebony&amp;quot; tried to influence perceptions through this ideal “brown-skinned” woman.  The charm schools weren’t just creating models but a self-confident woman who may not become a model but was ready to face the work force with less fears of knowing the right thing to say or the appropriate attire for the job.  An interesting example she used  was Watson’s Charm Clinic, that if you put too much make-up on you could look like you were going to a nightclub not to work.  An important point made in Watson’s address was that one’s appearance reflects one’s abilities.  These options led women to believe that they would improve the view of a black woman and bring her more social mobility.  With all of that being said, where does the dark-skinned black woman fit in?  As I read “More than a lady” by Fleming, they seemed contradictory.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;What women activists did defied this ideal notion of a woman black or white.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  But what is interesting was when I read how a black female civil rights worker was demonstrating and was grabbed and slapped in the face by a cop and his response grouped all black people together.  If she was a white activist, she probably wouldn’t have been slapped around or beaten as these black women were.  To the cop, she was black and he didn’t care if you were man or woman.   --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I really was interested by the experience of the black model who was too light skinned to represent the African Americans, but too dark to represent the whites. That is just ridiculous to me in today&amp;#039;s terms, especially since in black and white print you probably wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to differentiate between whether she was white or light skinned black or a subtle shade of orange. It&amp;#039;s not often that you think about the hardships of the models in the modeling industry, but it was enlighening to read about this experience of exclusion solely because you happened to be too light skinned, but not light skinned enough. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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== Laila Haidarali, &amp;quot;Polishing Brown Diamonds,&amp;quot; African American Women, Popular Magazines, and Modeling==&lt;br /&gt;
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I was interested to read about magazines lightening the skin tones of models for white magazines. I’m far from surprised, even if I hadn’t heard of it being done before reading this article. It’s sort of a way to keep that “exotic” look, yet with more acceptable skin color. What’s most interesting to me is that it is still goes on today. For instance, check out a comparison of [http://entertainment.msn.co.nz/img/blog/aug08/blog080808_beyonce2.jpg Beyonce] in a Paris L’Oreal ad to what she actually looks like. As if Beyonce didn’t already have fairly light skin. I’d say she probably fits into the “Brownskin” the article talks about. So, how would you like to explain yourself Paris L’Oreal? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It was great to read this article for many reasons; it was fascinating and enlightening. One of the things I found the most interesting about it, though, was how often &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Haidarali emphasized the fact that the ideal was, yes, feminine, hardworking and family oriented, but also heterosexual.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think in some of the articles we have read this semester they do not reiterate this point as much as Haidarali because they think it is understood. While I never really thought post-war America was open to homosexuality, I appreciate her continually reminding us that sexism and racism were not the only discriminations of the day. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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When this article spoke of &amp;quot;Brownskin&amp;quot; models, I was not aware of how racially ambiguous they appeared. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;[http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1364/1294691395_9722feeb99.jpg Sylvia Fitt]&amp;#039;&amp;#039;--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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This article though eye-opening was not incredibly surprising. It is sad to see that though blacks were being accepted in some aspects of life and society, they process of &amp;quot;fitting in&amp;quot; or perhaps aesthetic assimilation is something that will never come to fruition.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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Taylor and Anna thanks for the links! The Beyonce one is really creepy--even the amount of touching up they do to so-called &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; women&amp;#039;s photos is enough to set me off, but she&amp;#039;s really a totally different shade! And I would have assumed that Sylvia Fitt was Caucasian, except that the picture is in Jet! I knew to some extent that darker-skinned models and those with what are considered &amp;quot;African&amp;quot; features (as opposed to &amp;quot;European,&amp;quot; I assume) were discriminated against in the modeling industry, and this article definitely reinforced that, but the racial ambiguity of these &amp;quot;Brownskin&amp;quot; models is really something else. I also was very intrigued by the description of the &amp;quot;What Happened to the Brandford Models?&amp;quot; article, and how these models were presented as not only body or beauty ideals, but also as models of femininity and motherhood and all that &amp;quot;cult of domesticity&amp;quot; business. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;We Marched for Our Rights,&amp;quot; Rev. Naomi Craig ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The last line of this article struck me the most, &amp;quot;I still have a piece that is missing in my life because I never got to really know him like I would have wanted to.&amp;quot; If this was the start of the article or I had missed something, I would have thought she was talking about a father, a brother, a lover...someone that she would have had a close personal connection with that ended to soon. I certainly would not have expected her to be talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This line, I think, shows how deeply MLK inspired not only African-Americans, but all Americans.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; His assassination was something personal. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was really inspiring to me and also showed me the true difference between the North and South, it was not something we just read about, it was a reality. Naomi Craig was scared for her son and daughter&amp;#039;s welfare but never stopped them from growing into the people they wanted to be, amongst all the racial differences she let them attend school in the South and travel to a place that appeared to be on a different continent, not states inside the United States. I also wanted to note on the line she stated, &amp;quot;I had never been around so many Blacks before; I thought it was wonderful. I felt they were all so pretty, all different colors.&amp;quot; That was the most inspiring line for me, Mrs. Craig saw beyond first appearances she believed color was beautiful why could America not do the same? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I was going to quote that same like Megan did! I found it so interesting that she commented on the various skin tones of the other African-Americans at her daughter&amp;#039;s school. You always hear of black and white, not normally of all the varying skin tones.  Her reasoning for not protesting the Vietnam war was admirable. &amp;quot;How could I protest it, when he was already in there and his mother was heartbroken. I couldn&amp;#039;t protest. One woman protesting, making a mother feel her son was over there in vain.&amp;quot;  I&amp;#039;m sure there were many others who feel that way, as I feel many people today feel that way about our current wars in the Middle East... Her reactions to MLK Jr&amp;#039;s death was felt by many across the nation as well I&amp;#039;m sure. &amp;quot;Here was a man who stood for beauty. He stood for everybody. He didn&amp;#039;t just fight for Blacks, he fought for anyone who needed rights.&amp;quot;  Such a lasting impact one individual could make on an entire nation.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked reading this piece on Naomi Craig. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I love reading personal stories of people who actually got to experience what we learn about in class.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Mrs.Craig&amp;#039;s point of view was a unique one because she was from the North. She said she felt naive. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I wonder if a lot of black people from the North felt naive that they didn&amp;#039;t really know how bad it really was in the South.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; There were two parts that struck me in particular. One was when she was talking about the war in Vietnam. She said that even though she didn&amp;#039;t agree with the war she didn&amp;#039;t protest it either because she felt bad for those soldiers who went in and for their mothers. This was interesting because she gave an African American view of the Vietnam war. I also liked the part about when she went to Washington DC for the March on Washington. She said, &amp;quot;Look, this is history. We need to be in this.&amp;quot; Her desire to be a part of this historical day and event reminded me of how I think a lot of black Americans and even white Americans felt about the inauguration of President Obama. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Rev. Naomi Craig’s interview was quite interesting. We hear and read so much about the Southern African Americans during this time; it is nice to have a perspective of a Northern African American.  I was touched by the same section as Megan and Christine. Craig’s description of her naivety of the south and how beautiful it was to see so many black people in one place at the college  was touching. I was also intrigued by her comments on finding employment and searching for a home. Craig explains “here I was dressed lovely, thinking that was the first step. And here was some dowdy, ugly woman telling me I couldn&amp;#039;t have a job.” Illustrating that during the depression era there were limited jobs and even further limitations for African American women. Her description of the trouble she faced buying a house in Rhode Island was kind of heart breaking. I couldn’t imagine getting my hopes up in a phone conversation with a realtor just to have him see the color of my skin and tell me there are no houses available. She couldn&amp;#039;t even hold her own mortgage, she had to have a white man hold it! This just proves that it is a great misconception that racial discrimination only took place in the South.-Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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I have never really connected the Vietnam War with the Civil Rights movement before.  I know that many groups like the Black Panthers were against it, but they were only part of it.  I would think that the Vietnam would take away momentum from the Civil Rights movement, as it was more than just a race issue.  Is it possible to protest a war from just a view on how it is racist?  It seems to me that would take away from both the Civil Rights and the anti-war cause.  - J Rowley&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_11_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 11 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_11_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-04-01T06:41:48Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Indian Relocation, Wilma Mankiller */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;MAKE SURE TO ADD YOUR COMMENTS UNDER THE RELEVANT AUTHOR/TITLE HEADING (OR TO CREATE A NEW HEADING IF THERE ISN&amp;#039;T ONE YET)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;Balancing Work and Family,&amp;quot; Betty Jeanne Boggs ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;quot;Always this-- &amp;#039;because you&amp;#039;re a woman&amp;#039;&amp;quot; (page 208). I was really moved by this article and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;felt that as all of the articles get closer to current times, their revelance becomes so much more alarming.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I can&amp;#039;t believe that things written by females (what feels like) SO LONG AGO are still things that I look at society today and think are completely ridiculous. I did, however, really appreciate her husband in this article. FINALLY, a good man in history who wasn&amp;#039;t pushing his wife into the home. He encouraged her to work while he finished school because she liked her work, even though they were married, and when they accidentially got married he still wanted her to continue working because he KNEW how much she liked her job. I wish there were more historically based documents that talked about things like this just because it makes things not always depressing. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I still felt strong emotions towards her statement &amp;quot;For one thing, I wanted to stay home with the baby; two, I wanted to help Josh get through; three, I really enjoyed that job. I just didn&amp;#039;t know what to do about it, because I enjoyed working and yet I thought I should really be home with that baby&amp;quot; (page 210)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; because it&amp;#039;s something that I feel goes above the issue of sex and into the issue of parenthood. I can&amp;#039;t imagine it&amp;#039;s ever easy to look at your child bonding more with your husband/wife and NOT feel like you may be missing out on something because you feel like you have obligations that don&amp;#039;t allow that access. I am sure that her husband felt the exact same way when he looked at her relationship with the children, though, because in a family it always seems greener on the other side. I feel as though this article truly represents a healthy relationship between husband and wife, and every insecurity that Betty Jeanne Boggs felt about working while she had a husband was something that was based upon society, not upon her husbands actions. This could just be my wishful thinking, but it&amp;#039;s nice to imagine. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I admire this woman for paving the way for working mothers, if only for a time, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also noticed her husband&amp;#039;s willingness to rely on her for income while he finished school and often stayed home with their son. His attitude appears remarkably progressive for a time when many thought men should be resuming their places as heads of households after the war.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also noticed how conflicted the author felt about both wanting to work and wanting to be at home with her children, saying she &amp;quot;wanted to be in two places at one time.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I went to the Great Lives lecture on Rosie the Riveter tonight, and the speaker quoted a poll taken during WWII about the most admired women in America. First was Eleanor Roosevelt, and second was Betty Crocker,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and I think those contrasting results reflect the independence and work vs. domestic housewife dichotomy that women like the author experienced in those years. Many of today&amp;#039;s working mothers can turn to their mothers for advice on how to balance their different wants and obligations, but these women were part of the first generation of women, of middle class women especially, to really have any sort of opportunity to work outside of the home after having children. They were making it up as they went along. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I really like reading about Rosie the Riveters. They are definitely an inspiration for women. Sometimes, however, I read about a woman or hear her story as I did with Betty Jeanne Boggs&amp;#039; story, and  I feel that it&amp;#039;s a story about two different women. One part of the story is the rise of a more independent woman who relies on herself financially, has to take care of the children while the husband is off fighting the war, and is usually working at a labor-intensive job. They juggle everything fairly well for being on their own and even obtain raises in wages and in higher positions as in Boggs&amp;#039; case. As soon as the husbands come home and the war is over, a new woman appears. Even though Boggs&amp;#039; did want to eventually continue her career she didn&amp;#039;t do so until much later down the road when her children were full grown. She was content with staying at home taking care of her husband and family. She was consumed with her family. She said, &amp;quot;...but I would never go anywhere unless he would go,&amp;quot; (referring to her husband). No longer were women working and creating their own wealth. They were again housewives and for the most part enjoyed being in that role. Personally I think because the idea of a women working and being away from the home and being a mother was fairly new, most didn&amp;#039;t think it was possible to juggle both or weren&amp;#039;t sure how to go about doing it. I think more men than women didn&amp;#039;t think it was possible otherwise the &amp;quot;problem that has no name&amp;quot; would not have arose. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Betty Bogs said, &amp;quot;I worked in a war plant and it was one of the things you did when your country was at war.&amp;quot; (P. 208) Just the way she said it made it sound like it was normal, and I think she is right in a sense&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. It was normal for women to go out and work; it was a way to help with the war effort. Her experience of loving her job seemed quite similar to the other Rosie the Riveters we have read about. I was surprised though, to see that she was going to school for a math degree, and even considered becoming a lab technician. At the time, I think it was frowned upon for women to be anything other than a housewife or a teacher. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even when I did my interview for our paper, my interviewee said the only jobs you went to school for were to be a teacher or a secretary.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Betty enjoyed working; I&amp;#039;m sure it was liberating to her because she was doing something many people frowned upon. It was also interesting how there was a prominent role reversal between Betty and her husband Josh. She was the one working, and her husband was the one who was with their baby more often and seemed to have a closer relationship with the child. Bogs said, &amp;quot;Josh had a good relationship built up, because he&amp;#039;d have Tad to himself.&amp;quot; (P. 210). And, her husband was completely okay with staying at home with the children while she worked!  The surprising part was, though, that although Betty loved her job and enjoyed working, she encouraged women to stay home with their children because it was important to their development. I guess that was the most surprising part to me. She worked so hard and had come so far, but realized that in the end, her family came first. -- Alex M. &lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading this article.  I find it rather ironic that today’s woman still struggles with the choice between staying home and raising her children and going out into the workplace.  Being an older student, I notice a number of my friends who have college degrees, including post-graduate degrees and have made the decision to forego a career or postpone their career to stay home with their children. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think that it is difficult to say what decision you will make regarding your kids until you are in the position of having to make the decision of leaving your child with someone else or working.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Betty Jeanne Boggs was fortunate to be married to someone willing to sacrifice his time to give her the opportunity to further her career and her husband was lucky to have a woman willing to support him while he finished school. - EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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Boggs obviously believed that a woman should be able to do anything a man could do, such as go to school and work in certain jobs.  However &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;for raising a kid she thinks that &amp;quot;a mother should be there the first couple of years of a child&amp;#039;s life,&amp;quot; (30)  Does this mean that she did not think it was a man&amp;#039;s place to raise a kid?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Obviously she felt that a man should help, as Josh helped plenty with Tad but their was never any mention of him giving up his education or his job.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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As EFritz was saying above, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it really is hard for a woman to judge another about their struggle of work and home until they are in that position.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Boggs was able to keep working, but mainly just because her husband was home more while continuing his education.  Had he already finished school, she would have had to end her career earlier.  It wasn&amp;#039;t as if he was like &amp;quot;Hey Honey, you keep on keepin&amp;#039; on at that job of yours and make me some money!&amp;quot; He understood how much easier it would be at the time to have the arrangement of work and home that way... In response to J Rowley&amp;#039;s question, I don&amp;#039;t think Boggs was implying that it was not a man&amp;#039;s place to raise a child.  As a mother, you feel a certain bond or connection with your child and not only want to be there in those initial year, but you feel a NEED to be there for your child.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I think this article was chosen to be the first for this section because it is still relevant to the struggles that women-and especially mothers, go through today. The struggle between wanting to be a full time caregiver and the desire to have a career and be successful in the field of your choosing do not always go hand in hand, and some places of employment are not as accommodating as one would like them to be. Rarely are “stay at home” dads the ideal image of American families even today. A stay at home dad contrasts to what people see as the “normal” family situation, while a stay at home mom is still seen as the norm. Women who choose to work full time, for any reason, still have to face criticism from other people about how they choose to raise their children. And sometimes those critics do not take into account the improvements in the standard of living that the child (or children) can potentially attain if the mother works or both parents work. Supporting the children should be the main objective, but many times that idea gets lost in what outsiders consider proper. –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rachel Carson Answers Her Critics==&lt;br /&gt;
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I am not the world&amp;#039;s biggest environmentalist and I still loved this article. Rachel Carson did an awesome job defending herself against her critics in this article and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;for some reason I was in disbelief that even back then people questioned the existance of environmental problems like pesticides and pollutions.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Ridiculous that her response &amp;quot;No, the problem of pesticides is not merely the dream of an avracious author, out to pile up royalties by frightening the public- it is very much with us, here and now&amp;quot; (page 229) even has to be made. Her proof of the levels of toxins in the dying animals was disgusting, to say the very least. and I completely agree with her statement that &amp;quot;A world that is no longer fit for wild plants that is no longer graced by the flights of birds, a world whose streams and forrests are empty and lifeless is not likely to be fit habitat for man himself, for these things are symptoms of an ailing world&amp;quot; (page 228). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She certainly won me over. (And I would especially &amp;#039;&amp;#039;buy some more Samoas&amp;#039;&amp;#039; to support her environmentalist cause.)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I know that earlier in this class we had talked about how women were often linked to the environmentalist cause so I tried to keep that in mind when I was reading this piece. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I am not sure if I could picture a man writing this with the same effect.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Most of the points she makes are very strong and she even seems to go against the point that she is saving nature only to save the beauty of it.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;However, if women were still connected to the environmentalist cause would she have an easier time winning them over because she was a woman?  Would she have a tougher time gaining support from men?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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J Rowley--good questions. What if Silent Spring had been written by a man? Gotta love theoreticals... I agreed that this was a very strong answer to all of her critics--stronger still because she didn&amp;#039;t specifically target any one person or company, and made it clear that she was not taking any of the criticism personally, and was thus not bothered by it:  &amp;quot;I am confident that the verdict of history will show that we...&amp;quot; She invokes history to her side, claiming that time will tell, as it ultimately did. Very smart.  --Sarah Smethurst &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;(Samoas FTW)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Sarah&amp;#039;s post, I think that it was Carson&amp;#039;s intention not to target one person, company, or group of people. During this period of time, when America was still feeling a backlash against women&amp;#039;s rights, it was tougher for women to gain momentum in anything they said or did. I think Carson realized this, and perhaps realized that she would be more effective if she left the boundaries opened and made a general statement, therefore gaining more support and respect from those who supported, and even more importantly those who opposed her.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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==Louisa Randall Church Explores the Duties of Parents as Architects of Peace, 1946==&lt;br /&gt;
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Out of Church’s fear of bombs, “in the hundreds and thousands,”(410) she decides that the only way to save the world is to raise children the right way. But aside from that, something struck me funny, the second full paragraph on page 411, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Church discusses the importance of raising children correctly, but keeps referring to the child as “he”, “when &amp;#039;&amp;#039;he&amp;#039;&amp;#039; has achieved complete control over &amp;#039;&amp;#039;himself&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and his environment. Only then can &amp;#039;&amp;#039;he&amp;#039;&amp;#039; meet the exigencies of worthy citizenship in the world of tomorrow.” So what does this say about the author’s view of the roles of girls in the future?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Do these rules listed by Church only apply to male children? Or perhaps it is the assumption that only the male children will be in the public arena and be able to make a difference in the “world of tomorrow” whereas female children will merely grow up to produce more children to raise in the same way her mother had? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Erin, I noticed that Church uses &amp;#039;he&amp;#039; throughout the piece, but I don&amp;#039;t necessarily think it was meant to indicate that girls were not valued, just &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;a quirk of grammar&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. She actually states quite clearly that in the near future women &amp;quot;will be taking their rightful place in world affairs,&amp;quot; and so girls should be &amp;quot;provided with the same opportunities&amp;quot; (pg. 411) as their brothers. She seems to hold a fairly egalitarian view of parenting, advocating that both mothers and fathers be involved in the lives of their children and consistently referring to the responsibilities of &amp;#039;parents&amp;#039; rather than simply the role of &amp;#039;mother. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Just&amp;quot; a quirk of grammar? I wonder that if this, and similar use of gendered language throughout history is just a &amp;quot;quirk of grammar,&amp;quot; and if so, why people get upset over phrases like &amp;quot;rule of thumb,&amp;quot; whether or not the supposed history of that phrase is true or not, the implications of that phrase is what makes it contentious. The use of gendered language carries powerful messages that convey female-ness as weak, passive, powerless, etc. while the opposite is true with male-oriented language. I think that there is more meaning to a woman who seems &amp;quot;almost a feminist&amp;quot; because of some of her arguments using such a &amp;quot;quirk of grammar&amp;quot; than we seem to accord it--surely a woman as conscious as Church about women&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;rightful place in society&amp;quot; would not use &amp;quot;he&amp;quot; out of expediency or convenience. Maybe it sheds some light into pervading conceptions of women&amp;#039;s identities and how they related to the whole--if not in general, then at least from Church&amp;#039;s point of view? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann&amp;#039;s statement above. One of Church&amp;#039;s main arguments for attaining personal security for children is equal rights between all children and not showing favoritism, as well as asserting that &amp;quot;neither the father nor mother should reign supreme&amp;quot; (411). Going along with equal rights between the sexes, she defends that &amp;quot;girls should be provided with the same opportunities, intellectually, professionally, socially and economically as boys&amp;quot; (411). If Church believed that only male citizens are valuable members of society, I don&amp;#039;t believe she would be encouraging parents to provide their daughters with the same opportunities. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also found the wording of Church&amp;#039;s essay interesting when she states &amp;quot;women will be taking their &amp;#039;&amp;#039;rightful&amp;#039;&amp;#039; places in society&amp;quot; (411). This almost sounds feminist. It seems like Church is arguing that women have been denied something they were entitled to all along-an equal place with men in all worldly affairs.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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==Nonconformist Joyce Johnson Recounts Her Experience in Obtaining an Illegal Abortion in New York City, 1955==&lt;br /&gt;
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Getting an abortion now seems like it would be a horrible, isolating experience. It is still so controversial that even if a woman makes that decision and is happy with it, she has to face judgment from everyone around her. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Getting an abortion in 1955 seems like it would be so much worse.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Abortion was to be unspoken of and it was really dangerous. In order to find a person to carry out an illegal abortion Joyce Johnson had to ask friends and friends of friends, all of whom probably judged her. She ended up having to meet a shady guy in a restaurant who had some sick obsession with helping girls get abortions. Joyce was truly alone through the entire process. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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To add, The fact that single women would rather face danger and health risks to have an illegal abortion than have a baby shows the amount of pressure that these women were under to fit into a mold. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;To Joyce Johnson, an abortion was living and having a child meant dying. That is a pretty serious statement.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Regardless of one&amp;#039;s moral idea on the subject, I have to say the idea of having a child to many young women today is still the equivalent of dying. If only 1955 had been more acceptable towards the use of contraception, then less women, like Joyce Johnson, would have had to make the decision to stop an unplanned pregnancy. Still, it is disgusting that this decision today, and in 1955, was considered a PUBLIC decision in regards to laws and social acceptability. I still think today that ultra-coservatives would be more willing to forgive a serial rapist and murderer than a woman who made the decision to NOT ruin her life, career, societal standing, education, dreams, ambition, etc., to have an abortion. Based upon unplanned pregnancy levels just because the opportunity to have an abortion is there doesn&amp;#039;t mean that one is going to take advantage of that option. It is a very hard, and very personal decision; Which I think Joyce Johnson did an amazing job conveying. It isn&amp;#039;t fair that a male can have sex unprotected for fun and not have to deal with the same consequences (which the article implied that Joyce Johnson just knew that it was as much of an obligation to the father as it was to her which i would LOVE to have more information upon... was this the thinking of society as a whole at the time? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Was a man financially obligated to take care of the situation? How did that notion change into what it is today?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;)in today&amp;#039;s world even with sexual protection opportunities. Contradictory to her belief on his financial responsibility however I found it interesting that she said &amp;quot;Life was considered sacred. But independence could be punishable by death. The punishment for sex was, appropriately, sexual&amp;quot; (page 419) which is seemingly contradictory to the financial responsibility she felt he had. I totally support her on that statement though. A woman&amp;#039;s right to choose her life ends in this country when a zygote is involved, yet if she were sexually assaulted or raped the legal system would find a way to blame her as the Victim, instead of the male who was just acting naturally. more proof that the punishment for sex is appropriately sexual. I think having an abortion is something that Joyce Johnson thought about roughly, probably lost a ton of sleep over, and I&amp;#039;m happy that she had the opportunity to fly to Puerto Rico to get it done (although, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m also sadly suprised that having a legal abortion at a facility in Puerto Rico would be safer than an illegal one in the United States...??&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;) because if she hadn&amp;#039;t had that opportunity then she would have been stuck with an unloved child and husband, and a disdain for their involvement in her life. Obviously, I feel very strongly in support of Joyce Johnson&amp;#039;s decision to take control of her livelihood, and believe that because of this experience she, and the boy who knocked her up, would in the future both be more careful in regards to sexual activity. It wasn&amp;#039;t a simple solution and from this article I can only imagine the disgust I would feel towards the society who would judge her for such a decision. It&amp;#039;s amazing how morality derived from the teachings of the Catholic Church, in their passage onto the other christian faiths based upon them, play such an unfortunate role historically in the lives of Women in the United States, yet Boys will just be boys. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Ssellers. The U.S. didn&amp;#039;t give her an option. How could the &amp;quot;Land of the Free&amp;quot; criticize one of it&amp;#039;s citizens for taking advantage of an opportunity that the state refused to give?-Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;interesting that the doctor in Canarsie was clearly against abortions, as he didn’t even use the word “abortion” and admonished Johnson, telling her “don’t ever let me catch you back here again, young lady!” (421), yet he still was willing to perform the operation.  Why was that?  Did his concern for women’s safety, the fear that they might turn to someone incompetent, override his opposition to the procedure?  And were most doctors who performed illegal abortions like him, or did they genuinely believe the women had a right to the procedure?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I like Alice found interesting that the doctor described other procedures he performed but would not dare mention abortion. I do not think he really cared about women&amp;#039;s health, I think he was worried that if women came to him who were pregnant and wanted abortions one he would know they were pregnant outside of marriage and two he did not want people (government) to find out he was performing them, at the time I feel like he could of lost his license if it was found out. Maybe he did care about women but with all the precautions he took and the way he spoke to Joyce I have to say I do not think he did, he may of just been a doctor who did not believe in having children outside of marriage. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Regardless of everyone&amp;#039;s outrage at the stigma attached to abortions during most of the twentieth century and up to today, why wouldn&amp;#039;t it have been a public decision? Pushing aside my own feelings towards abortion and trying to stay away from issues of morality or immorality, shouldn&amp;#039;t our society be concerned about demographics? For example, during the early years of the twentieth century in the US and in the pre-WW2 years in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany we saw government incentives for parents to have more children, because (at least in the latter two) they had a national security interest in seeing higher birth rates. Americans at the turn of the century (and arguably still today) were concerned that low birth rates and abortions among upper and middle class whites would lead to &amp;quot;racial suicide.&amp;quot; When people at the time thought in this manner, why wouldn&amp;#039;t abortion become a public decision? It seems that it made sense for that time in history and arguably even today--unless one thinks that we should all go our separate ways and that individual decisions do not affect society as a whole. I think the decision to take a pregnancy to term or abort has drastic consequences (although unforeseen) for society insofar as determining the demographics of that society in years to come. And if the argument that men should provide financially for the women that they impregnate and either assist in expenses or pay for an abortion is ironic in that it perpetuates the idea that women cannot provide for themselves, and is a form of protectionist legislation that we saw in earlier years such as Muller v. Oregon. I feel that as one of the few men in the class I should just come out and state my stance on abortion--I am all for it, especially as a male I feel as though no matter what my personal convictions are as far as morality and life and etc., it&amp;#039;s not my body and it&amp;#039;s not my choice. Personal liberty is important to me, which is why I support the ability of women to have abortion, and also the same reason why I oppose legislation that demands men to take financial responsibility for these matters--it&amp;#039;s a violation of personal liberty. And no, I&amp;#039;m sure that it isn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;fair&amp;quot; that men can &amp;quot;have fun&amp;quot; and not have to deal with the same consequences, but that isn&amp;#039;t something that can be legislated into equality. On a different note, the stigma attached to abortions then and now--it doesn&amp;#039;t just come from oppressive conservative men, but it comes from women as well. Not just the Bible-thumpers, but from young, college-aged liberal-esque women who for all their proclamations of being prochoice, still seem to find ways to label their fellow women who have found some level of sexual liberation and have fun, like men have supposedly been doing for ages, various derogatory terms. An example of this would be all the dirty looks and hushed whispers I&amp;#039;ve seen and heard on this campus from girls directed towards girls who have had abortions. Again, women cannot be socially oppressed by just men, other women take part in it and I want to know why--what do women have to gain by perpetuating certain stigmas and conceptions? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was horrifying. The measures that Joanna had to take to get an abortion in New York City seemed so...for lack of a better word sketchy, that they would have seemed better placed in a bad movie. it was really sad to see the measures that women were reduced to in order to obtain the procedure, like meeting a creep at the Rainbow room that wants to take you back to fire island for some post abortion &amp;quot;relaxation&amp;quot;. With stories like this it is no wonder that women like Margaret Sanger were moved to action. The worst part about this story is that Joanna was probably one of the lucky ones in that she seemingly had a safe operation without any harmful side affects. I&amp;#039;d hate to think about how many women were not so lucky.-Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;An Unplanned Pregnancy&amp;quot;, by Joanna Rubin==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article to be &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;fascinating, insightful and harrowing&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. I wonder &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;what audience Joanna Rubin was writing for and after having her abortion at a time when it was illegal, what made her be so willing to share her story.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Were abortions also illegal in Puerto Rico at that time? I know Rubin did not see any other Americans at her clinic, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;was it a likely occurrence that American women would go to Puerto Rico or other countries for the procedure?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; My curiosity was piqued about the beliefs of American doctors after the line, &amp;quot;When I found out I was pregnant, I went to see a doctor, and he told me to come and see him afterwards. I had a low-grade infection. He was very sweet, supportive, gave me antibiotics&amp;quot; (217).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Did American Doctors refer their patients to unofficial clinics that they knew off or simply accept that it was inevitable? As it was illegal, were doctors encouraged to turn in women who got abortions? Were there any actions taken against these women? For me, this article raised a lot more questions about what was typical than it answered.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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To answer one of the questions raised above, I think maybe Joanna Rubin decided to tell her story because she needed to tell people, mainly women, that even though she knew that she wanted an abortion it was still a hard decision to make. She said, &amp;quot;Although I didn&amp;#039;t for a minute think I didn&amp;#039;t want the abortion, it was still a very, very heavy experience. It isn&amp;#039;t &amp;#039;Oh, this is a cool, easy decision to make, and there are no consequences.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;(217) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She wanted to make sure that women knew that abortion wasn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;taking the easy way out,&amp;quot; it was scary, intimidating, and probably created a feeling of guilt which may be another reason for her writing this piece.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also was wondering about the number of women that went to Puerto Rico and other countries to receive abortions during this time. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think when comparing this abortion story of Joanna to the other story of Jocye Johnson, it reveals that pregnancy was a very real and scary thing for women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Both these women made desperate attempts to get an abortion, while still weighing the heavy costs of pain (both physical and emotional), injury,  and possible death. This story, in particular shows the willingness and hardships Joanna faced to get an abortion; it meant she had to leave the country just to do so.  It shows that pregnancy and abortion were real fears for young women, who had little to no access of birth control.  I think that it was included to show that there was a real need for contraceptive information in the 50&amp;#039;s and 60&amp;#039;s and what would lead to the landmark courtcase &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Roe v Wade&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I commend Joanna Rubin for writing her story at a time when abortion was illegal in the United States, I feel that she wanted other women to know that they were not alone. I think that even though Joanna knew she was going to get an abortion no questions asked she knew any woman who gets an abortion would feel a burden on her shoulders. I agree with abratchi this article made me think of Birth Control clinics and how there was a strong need for them not just for married women but any woman who wanted to learn about the risks, symptoms, or who to talk to when they found out they were pregnant. Even today I feel that more women should learn about the risks of pregnancy and how shows on MTV such as 16 and pregnant (while not the high quality) are a reality and show that all it takes is one time and you can be pregnant. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Did women even think about an abortion possibly killing them?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Such as the woman in Margaret Sanger’s Epiphany over Birth Control article who died from a self induced abortion because she couldn’t handle another child. Of course there is always the possibility that child birth could also kill them. Abortion seems a lot more risky though, especially being illegal like it was. Abortion clinics surely couldn’t be regulated and keep safe because there weren’t any governmental policies or standards to be enforced. I would much rather have the child and give it up for an abortion, quietly, than risk dying from a painful abortion that could lead to a deadly infection. That’s just my opinion though; maybe they were too afraid of being pregnant in the first place to think straight and logically. Even though Ms. Rubin thinks that this is a “real clinic” and it “alleviated a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear,” (216) obviously it wasn’t much of facility because she did get “a low-grade infection,” (217). I know that she was in hast to rid herself of being pregnant, but you would think that she would be smarter about her decisions. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She obviously wasn’t going to tell her family, as Rubin describes, “I didn’t have any support from my parents,” (216), possibly because being a sexual women was taboo? Even if that was so, the least they could do was help her or were families that unsupportive of their daughters? I really can’t see a father and, partially, a mother abandoning their child in such a desperate situation.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Morgan above, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I feel pretty much the opposite way about everything she said.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Yes abortion was risky but so was pregnancy and childbirth. This woman was young, unwed, and in school.  If she were to have had the child she would have lost everything in life that she worked so hard for.  She may have been able to have the child quietly and gave it up, but who would have paid for it and where would she have gone? Her parents would have likely shunned her out of their lives, she didn&amp;#039;t have the money, the &amp;quot;father&amp;quot; of the baby didn&amp;#039;t have money. She would have had to take months off of school, and how would she have explained that?  And perhaps she could have gotten an infection from the abortion, but women were not sitting around gabbing about abortions so it&amp;#039;s not like they had first-hand accounts to go off of, just heresay and gossip.  I feel she was not &amp;quot;in hast,&amp;quot; she clearly weighed her options and knew what would have happen if she would have had a baby in her position.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Joanna Rubin’s piece “An Unplanned Pregnancy” was touching and interesting. I think that Rubin was attempting to express the fact that there was regret involved but she did what she thought was right. I agree with Christine, here is a young woman who did not love the person that impregnated her, in her first year of Grad school. If she did love him, she “might have kept it” (217) but she didn’t.  Which is a better choice, to live a life with a child and a husband whom you do not love and resent? Or go to any lengths, in this case, Puerto Rico, to have an abortion. She admits that this was a hard decision with consequences.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It also seems that her personal doctor was not completely opposed to her choice “When I found out I was pregnant, I went to see a doctor and he had told me to come and see him afterwards”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (217). He even gave her antibiotics. I was wondering how often doctors helped patients who went to have abortions out of the country or illegally? –Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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i think this piece really shows how alone women felt, and the total isolation that came along with an unwanted pregnancy. Rubin really had no one to turn to except the father of the baby who she did not love. At least today while an abortion is not a gratifying prospect to any woman, it is legal and women aren&amp;#039;t forced to undergo isolating and often unsafe procedures. The fact that her Doctor was understanding afterwards and gave her antibiotics to treat her infection made it seem like while Doctors could not perform the procedures they were sympathetic and did what they could. So while this Doctor was unwilling to perform the procedure, he was willing to be discreet and to treat her for the infection she got obtaining an illegal abortion. Perhaps there was some feeling of guilt behind his actions, I think if I was a Doctor I would feel guilty that I was knowingly turning women away and forcing them to take extreme measures against an unwanted pregnancy. -Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;The Problem That Has No Name,&amp;quot; Betty Friedan, 1963==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think, more than anything, what got to these women was the isolation involved in being the perfect domestic housewife.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; This was an age of single family homes, of cars instead of public transportation, of cleaning quietly in the kitchen rather than enjoying a laugh with the other women over lunch at the defense plant like the women interviewed in the video we watched. These women&amp;#039;s lives revolved around a home that for a significant portion of the day she shared with perhaps a mildly communicative infant or no one at all if her children were old enough to be in school. Sure she went out to do the shopping and interacted with people through that, but she always ultimately returned to her empty house that constantly reminded her of further chores she needed to accomplish. And no matter how many friends women did have, they&amp;#039;d still feel isolated in that they couldn&amp;#039;t share with their friends what was truly on their minds, thinking themselves all alone in their feelings of desperation and boredom. It&amp;#039;s telling that just a simple acknowledgment that friends shared similar thoughts could cause women to break down and cry &amp;quot;just to know they are not alone.&amp;quot; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Mary Ann raised an important point about Betty Freidan’s excerpt, to know that you were not alone in how you felt about your duties as a wife, mother, and the home.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Women were facing societal implications that if you felt that you wanted more or even a career that this meant that you could not be worthy or could not fulfill those duties. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; If you step outside of those roles of the home, does that make you less able to maintain them?  In the 1950’s, you were looked down upon if you did, did it make you less of a mother and wife?  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It became a moral dilemma.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Women had to maintain that ideal picture, they felt the pressure that limited options for self fulfillment for women in those roles.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I play the scene in my mind, the husband saying, “Oh dear, why are you not happy, you have more than any woman could ever want?” (no pressure here.)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Freidan found in talking with other women that she was not alone in her thoughts.  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Women at this time were dealing with such an immense problem. Prior to WWII, they had obtained universal suffrage, and then more independence through the work place while their husbands were in combat. Suddenly, when their husbands returned their extensive independence disappeared as well. Many would would have been scrutinized by their husbands or their peers for complaining about the lifestyle changes they encountered. It is not surprising to see them internalize many of their doubts and fears regarding their complacency or position in society. Over time, it is evident that the problem that women encountered disappeared, and women began to obtain more control of their own lives and leverage in society. Friedan was a pioneer in exploring communication and bonds between women.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this passage very interesting and thought provoking.  Women had a brief glimpse of life in the workplace during World War II, but when the men came home, they again assumed their traditional role as a housewife.  This excerpt mainly revolves around the question: Is this all our lives&amp;#039; will amount to?  Many obviously wanted more than what a housewife provided and some felt almost incomplete doing the monotonous work of daily chores.  However, I think now, especially after doing my interview that this work could not only be difnified but also quite challenging.  The person who I interviewed said her daughter in law is a stay at home mom and she works harder than anybody she knows.  I expect these women to wish for more after many of them had jobs for years, but their work can be just as hard as many respects as what the men are doing. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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== Psychiatrist Marynia F. Farnham and Sociologist Ferdinand Lundberg Denounce the Modern Woman as the &amp;quot;Lost Sex,&amp;quot; 1947 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Oy vey, these women are something, aren’t they? Much like the women of the 19th century who went out into the public to tell women to get back into the house where they belonged, we’ve got a psychiatrist and a sociologist telling women that they shouldn’t have jobs. It just blows the mind. According to them, women who work are neurotic and unfeminine, and they ignore their family duties for their jobs and became resentful towards men. Are they speaking from personal experience, because, you know, they &amp;#039;&amp;#039;have jobs themselves&amp;#039;&amp;#039;? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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The idea of “feminine relinquishment” was interesting.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It seems strange that if you had a career outside of the home, that meant you lost you feminine qualities.  But when there was an ideal perception of family, that locked women in those roles, it made it difficult to go anywhere else without consequences.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I never thought about it as woman were living “dangerously” if women tried to juggle both work and home.  Everyone seems to suffer for the wife’s aspirations.  Who would want to leave the home if they felt they would destroy their family? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think that Farnham and Lundberg were vividly describing the moral dilemmas women were facing if they tried to work and take care of the family.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought these women were quite bold in some of their statements.  I thought that it was interesting how they equated women working outside the home as becoming more masculine, as MHimes above me stated.  They seem to believe that a woman could not possibly be feminine if working outside the home, which caused an internal struggle in women who worked while having household responsibilities, like a husband and children.  They seem to really find danger to a woman&amp;#039;s feminity if she is engaged in work, which in turn negatively affects men.  They appear as advocates of the this new modern cult of domesticity that was emerging in the post war period, it seems. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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At first glance, these writers describe the &amp;quot;Modern Woman&amp;quot; of 1947, as one who appears to have her own destiny within her grasp.  She is now conflicted however, because she has more responsibility; to the home, children, and to work. I found this article interesting because the writers argue the modern woman of their time is now struggling to retain femininity because she is in the &amp;quot;dangerous position of having to live one part of her life on the masculine level, [and] another on the feminine.&amp;quot;(413) Is the need to be equal to men and their accomplishments what caused this rivalry? I never really thought of how damaging the social and psychological barriers were in Post-War War II America. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I understand women proved what they were capable of, but what I am still curious about is how hard was it for women to switch back to dependence of their husbands when they knew they were just as capable in the workforce.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; From the videos we saw in class, I gathered that many women found pride that they could do skilled labor, but this article brings up a good perspective I think. From my interpretation the perspective is that women&amp;#039;s success has to be achieved through a balance of dependence and independence in their role in the household. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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==Taylor, Women Strike for Peace==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I can’t help but chuckle anytime HUAC gets the run around.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Just imagine being in that courtroom. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Middle-class, supposedly meek and compliant little housewives and mothers with their pristine white gloves being accused of Communist activity; even if they did have Communist sympathies, no one would believe it. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;It sounds like these women used the housewife image well in their campaign for peace.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Much like the women of the 19th century reform movement, they justified being involved in politics with their concerns as wives and mothers. And much like the reform women, they embraced and contradicted the ideal image of femininity at the same time. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the WSP to be extremely hypocritical. On one hand Ethel Baron Taylor is complaining about how &amp;quot;women are not in positions of power and they have no role in policy-making&amp;quot; (218) , and on the other she chooses to get her point across by portraying her organization in a way that makes them seem submissive and powerless. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even though she is fighting to obtain more power for women through this group, she inadvertently still relies on men. It particularly disturbed me when she waited for a man to help her out of the police van after being arrested; If Taylor can&amp;#039;t handle a five foot jump without a man guiding her, how are we supposed to take her cause seriously?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I saw WSP as more sly and manipulative.  They knew that the most effective way to get a woman&amp;#039;s voice heard was to play up those female stereotypes, especially in court&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  No judge would throw out a bunch of sweet women who weren&amp;#039;t doing anything wrong!  And they couldn&amp;#039;t go militant or get too forceful with their protests.  That kind of thing tends to irritate and annoy people rather than make them agreeable to the cause.  I just think that if you&amp;#039;re going to go with that method, you can&amp;#039;t complain about being treated like a stereotype afterwards.  So, Taylor complaining about wanting to be treated equally while manipulating the female stereotypes is definitely hypocritical.  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with CBrau. I love the women of the WSP! I found them hilarious and very manipulative. These women obviously knew exactly how to get attention and to use there femininity against political figures to buy for attention. But did these women really think that just because they were women nothing would happen to them? “They’re not going to electrocute me, They’re not going to shoot me,” (218) said Taylor while she was deciding to cross the street or not. Did she think this because she was a woman and surely men wouldn’t hurt her? I guess the stereotypes of that generation weren’t to hurt women, even if they were criminals? They were so outspoken though, even when in the presence of court, “we would present her with a bouquet, and we would applaud,” (220) but they weren’t thrown out of court. I wonder if in the decades before if they were even allowed in court, much less speak out. It appears to me that they were mainly a spectacle looking for attention towards their cause, even if it endangered them. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this piece was charming.  I absolutely love the visual of these women in their pretty little dresses with matching shoes and handbag, white gloves, hats and perfectly coiffed hair being brought in to testify before Congress.  I am no anti-war activist but I think these women had the backbone to petition their government to change the course of history, all before they had to get home and prepare dinner for their families and help their children with their homework.  And they still wanted to be treated as ladies, even while they were being hauled off to jail.  What irony. - EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t necessarily agree with their political opinions, but I&amp;#039;m just saying...their personality would be a good thing to have. Their spunk would continue to entertain people.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;Star Struck,&amp;quot; Vicki L. Ruiz ==&lt;br /&gt;
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All these articles are important in our understanding of the past and how it continues to shape the present. However, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found this article in particular to be especially important because generations later the poverty and degradation of Mexican Americans is still the reality. The Mexican American women from the 1920&amp;#039;s to 1950&amp;#039;s written about in this article could easily be Mexican American women today.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  All the issues they faced in the first half of the twentieth century are the same battles they fight today in the beginning of the twenty-first century, with little to no improvement. Perhaps it is because &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;unlike other immigrant groups, the Latina community continues to emigrate and despite having been an essential part of our nation for an extended time, they are perceived to be the “new guys.”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -- Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article could easily be related to today and how women are percieved or told how they should be percieved in the media. While I feel that many immigrant groups wanted to promote their culture, especially the Mexican Americans through language and traditions, the children of immigrant parents wanted to assimilate into American culture, and the leading way in California was through &amp;quot;the public fascination with Hollywood.&amp;quot;(367). Today, things have still not changed infact I believe we as a society have become more fascinated with Hollywood and how it defines America, I cannot even count how many times I have heard the story about Sandra Bullock and her husband and very little on world affairs or even the healthcare bill. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Being from Southern California, I can definately relate to this article and many of the points that are made here are definately still relevant today, many years later.  Many still live in poverty and are often treated as second class citizens.  There are tons of farming fields in the area, and you can generally only see mexicans out there picking.  It&amp;#039;s not that they choose this lifestyle, just that they are somehow relegated to do it.  One interesting thing the article mentions is that there was no gradual immersion language program and it was just &amp;quot;sink or swim in an English-only environment&amp;quot; (365).  I beleive this still holds true today, although it is somewhat better.  I knew some who hardly spoke english and were just thrown into an english-speaking environment, and this incredibly difficult to adapt.  Another interesting point is that being &amp;quot;Spanish&amp;quot; had a somewhat positive connotation whereas being &amp;quot;Mexican&amp;quot; was a negative connotation.  They speak the same language yet being from Mexico somehow makes you worse than being from Spain.  The thing that stands out to me the most is that people then and even now seem to have a pre-conceived notion that mexicans are inherently lower class than Americans, but they are people, just like we are. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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==Indian Relocation, Wilma Mankiller==&lt;br /&gt;
The hardships that Indians peoples faced throughout the 19th and 20th century had clear impacts.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This experience by one Indian girl who was forced to leave her town in Oklahoma for California was heartbreaking.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  This girl had to endure leaving her entire life, at the expense of the US Government who thought they were offering “a wonderful opportunity for Indian families to get great jobs, obtain good educations for their kids and, once and for all, leave poverty behind” (212).  This girls life did not get easier, but harder, emotionally and financially.  It is a clear example of how racial minorities were again, uprooted from their lives.  Wilma explains how she was teased because of her last name and how she knew she was clearly different from the other children, who knew as well.  This must have had lasting impacts on her as she grew and matured. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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The history of Native Americans deserves just as much credit as African Americans or Women&amp;#039;s history. This story of Indian relocation is just one of the many very sad experiences of what  United States policy has put them through.  The sadist part of it all is that they were here first! This particular story shows that even in the 1950s the US was still relocating 60,000 Indians thinking we had the right to &amp;quot;mainstream &amp;quot; them into Urban areas. After reading this depressing story it make me feel extremely grateful that Native Americans are no longer treated in this way and made me realize if anyone in the USA should be the most proud to be American, it should be all the Native Americans left today that still retain their cultures. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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Just as with the Japanese internment camps during World War II, I feel like the US government was good at alienating various racial/ethnic groups in America. The Indians had already been forcibly removed once (The Trail of Tears) but to do it again is just horrible. The fact that the government changed it mind all of a sudden was both disturbing to the American Indian way of life, but also scarred them emotionally and in many other ways, which is similar to what abratchi said above. What is most awful is how the Mankiller family had so much trouble adapting.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; How could the government just take the Indians from their old way of life and drop them into bustling urban/industrial cities, where they have no idea what to do, how to act, and are seen as aliens to the country, even though they were Americans.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It was sad to read about how the girls were made fun of at school, and as a result they &amp;quot;sat up late every night reading aloud to each other to get rid of our accents.&amp;quot; (P. 214). These girls were so ashamed of their ancestry, which was even sadder. Why was it so necessary to assimilate different cultures into American culture? Why couldn&amp;#039;t white Americans just simply coexist with minority groups and accept one another for their differences instead of displacing them physically as well as emotionally? Wilma Mankiller used the word &amp;quot;alienation&amp;quot; which I think is a perfect word to describe this situation. These Indians were alienated from their homes, culture and just life in general and the worst part of all of it was that this relocation didn&amp;#039;t help the government in any way. So in the end, both the government and the Indians lost. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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This line really caught my attention:  &amp;quot;He (Wilma&amp;#039;s father) must have honestly believed that in a distant city he could provide a better life for his children, with all the modern amenities&amp;quot; (p. 212).  Interesting, considering Wilma and her family were very poor and I&amp;#039;m assuming isolated from modern civilization at Mankiller Flats.  So how did Wilma&amp;#039;s father know about modern civilization and the chances it offered?  From talking to the BIA?  From going to Boarding School?  From working?  Or perhaps it really was their poverty that convinced him they needed to move and try for a new life (despite the risks and separation from home).  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting how she almost plays off the decision to move to California as her parents decisions that they made without the force of governmental pressure. Yes there were no weapons forcing them to move or marching them down a path they did not want to take, but the propaganda for leaving (the promise of a better life, the false advertisements of wealth and opportunity) would have been enough to get any group of people to leave their homelands, especially if they had been used to poverty for an extended period of time. The American government does not have the best track record when it comes to handling relations with other ethnicities and races in terms of making equal opportunities available. Ghettos turned ethnic enclaves seem to be a recurring theme in American minority history, and each minority group has had an impact on the development of the America that exists today, therefore each group does deserve to have recognition, not just the African Americans and women, but the Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps, the chicano Americans who were limited in their migration but who were instrumental in making the US a transcontinental commerce, and finally the Native Americans, who suffered every time white Americans wanted to move and take their land. No group should be excluded in American history and none should be excluded in how they are remembered and honored today. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this story really interesting, and I feel like it is an area that is not often discussed. I personally was not aware of efforts by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to relocate native Americans to urban areas as if they had not been moved around enough! The authors comparison of her journey to the trail of tears immediately caught my attention and in many ways her experiences could be compared to those of her ancestors. I also found it really interesting that her family bonded with the latina family in their neighborhood, this family probably were immigrants at one time so its nice to think that they would reach out and help another family going through similar experiences.-Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==A Letter to the Editor of &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Ladder&amp;#039;&amp;#039; from an African American Lesbian, 1957==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The issue of appearance and whether or not minority groups should dress according to the standards of “the dominant social group” was interesting here.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Conforming to their standards might be a way for a lesbian (or an African American or any other minority group) to prove that she was “normal” and that her sexuality should not be a determining factor of her standing in society.  On the other hand, not conforming to these standards would be a way to say “I don’t care what you think.”  The writer seems to think it shouldn’t matter either way, as she expresses  the hope that “someday…the ‘discreet’ Lesbian will not turn her head on the streets at the sight of the ‘butch’ strolling hand in hand with her friend in their trousers and definitive haircuts” (422).  It’s something modern lesbians could identify with, as there are many women for whom appearance is still a big concern, as they do not want the stereotype of the “manly” lesbian to be the only thing others think of.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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The Letter to the editor of The Ladder was very interesting.  I agree with Alice on many points. I was also intrigued by her account of the struggle that women faced in general, whether they were homosexual or not. She explains “Women, like other oppressed groups of one kind or another, have particularly had to pay a price for the intellectual impoverishment that the second class status imposed on us for centuries” (421). It must have been comforting for lesbian women to have these publications out there.  As  MP explained in the preface to the chapter, The Ladder was the first American lesbian publication. Upon further research, I found that The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States and was edited by Phyllis Lyon, co founder of Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian organization. As the writer of the letter noted, this publication was “a fine elementary step in a rewarding direction” (421). It seems like a publication such as The Ladder was a step forward in bringing the lesbian community together while portraying a positive image of lesbian women to the public, something that was beyond taboo at the time. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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==African American Pauli Murray Explains Why Negro Girls Stay Single, 1947==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this piece a mix of saddening, isolating, and devastating. I felt like there was no hope at all for the African American woman in any aspect of life, especially in finding love. She could aspire to better herself and get an education, but wouldn’t be able to find a job that would pay her equal to white women. She could look for a husband and she wouldn’t find one. This must have been the harshest reality to find; that African American just were not available and, those that were, did not want to marry her type of a woman. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She “often has a potential earning power far beyond the range of the majority of available singe males-a social handicap if she wants marriage,” (416).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; A &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;man’s partner making more than him must have been emasculating.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Men did not want to be subordinate to women in any way or in any race, as history has shown us; he always wanted to be the breadwinner for the family. “He is the victim of constant frustration in his role as a male because socially he is subordinate to the white women although he is trained to act as a member of the dominate sex,” (417). African American men were already seen as of lesser value than white women, and yet to be dominate in their own race. How could they be dominate while they were lesser in society than white women, less educated than African American women, and brought home less money to support their families? Because African American men were so emotionally broken by their place in the hierarchy of society as well as their role as African American men, women had no chance to find a strong male partner. Without such a partner or the potential to find one, I would feel isolated in society too. -Morgan M&lt;br /&gt;
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This reminded me so much of this wonderful non-fiction piece called &amp;quot;The Ghetto Girls&amp;#039; Guide to Dating and Romance&amp;quot; by Sonja Livingston. Check it out. ANYWAYS  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also heard echoes of the &amp;quot;double burden&amp;quot; idea of being both black and a woman:  &amp;quot;the Negro woman finds herself at the bottom of the economic and social scale.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I imagine that Murray&amp;#039;s article was pretty darn controversial at the time--she talks unabashedly about the failings of black men, throwing her lot in with ostracized women who have spoken out with similar opinions. She makes a bold call to arms, and I&amp;#039;d be interested to know how that was taken. I&amp;#039;d imagine there was a lot of hate mail involved. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_11_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 11 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_11_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-04-01T06:35:48Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Nonconformist Joyce Johnson Recounts Her Experience in Obtaining an Illegal Abortion in New York City, 1955 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;MAKE SURE TO ADD YOUR COMMENTS UNDER THE RELEVANT AUTHOR/TITLE HEADING (OR TO CREATE A NEW HEADING IF THERE ISN&amp;#039;T ONE YET)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;Balancing Work and Family,&amp;quot; Betty Jeanne Boggs ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;quot;Always this-- &amp;#039;because you&amp;#039;re a woman&amp;#039;&amp;quot; (page 208). I was really moved by this article and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;felt that as all of the articles get closer to current times, their revelance becomes so much more alarming.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I can&amp;#039;t believe that things written by females (what feels like) SO LONG AGO are still things that I look at society today and think are completely ridiculous. I did, however, really appreciate her husband in this article. FINALLY, a good man in history who wasn&amp;#039;t pushing his wife into the home. He encouraged her to work while he finished school because she liked her work, even though they were married, and when they accidentially got married he still wanted her to continue working because he KNEW how much she liked her job. I wish there were more historically based documents that talked about things like this just because it makes things not always depressing. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I still felt strong emotions towards her statement &amp;quot;For one thing, I wanted to stay home with the baby; two, I wanted to help Josh get through; three, I really enjoyed that job. I just didn&amp;#039;t know what to do about it, because I enjoyed working and yet I thought I should really be home with that baby&amp;quot; (page 210)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; because it&amp;#039;s something that I feel goes above the issue of sex and into the issue of parenthood. I can&amp;#039;t imagine it&amp;#039;s ever easy to look at your child bonding more with your husband/wife and NOT feel like you may be missing out on something because you feel like you have obligations that don&amp;#039;t allow that access. I am sure that her husband felt the exact same way when he looked at her relationship with the children, though, because in a family it always seems greener on the other side. I feel as though this article truly represents a healthy relationship between husband and wife, and every insecurity that Betty Jeanne Boggs felt about working while she had a husband was something that was based upon society, not upon her husbands actions. This could just be my wishful thinking, but it&amp;#039;s nice to imagine. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I admire this woman for paving the way for working mothers, if only for a time, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also noticed her husband&amp;#039;s willingness to rely on her for income while he finished school and often stayed home with their son. His attitude appears remarkably progressive for a time when many thought men should be resuming their places as heads of households after the war.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also noticed how conflicted the author felt about both wanting to work and wanting to be at home with her children, saying she &amp;quot;wanted to be in two places at one time.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I went to the Great Lives lecture on Rosie the Riveter tonight, and the speaker quoted a poll taken during WWII about the most admired women in America. First was Eleanor Roosevelt, and second was Betty Crocker,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and I think those contrasting results reflect the independence and work vs. domestic housewife dichotomy that women like the author experienced in those years. Many of today&amp;#039;s working mothers can turn to their mothers for advice on how to balance their different wants and obligations, but these women were part of the first generation of women, of middle class women especially, to really have any sort of opportunity to work outside of the home after having children. They were making it up as they went along. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I really like reading about Rosie the Riveters. They are definitely an inspiration for women. Sometimes, however, I read about a woman or hear her story as I did with Betty Jeanne Boggs&amp;#039; story, and  I feel that it&amp;#039;s a story about two different women. One part of the story is the rise of a more independent woman who relies on herself financially, has to take care of the children while the husband is off fighting the war, and is usually working at a labor-intensive job. They juggle everything fairly well for being on their own and even obtain raises in wages and in higher positions as in Boggs&amp;#039; case. As soon as the husbands come home and the war is over, a new woman appears. Even though Boggs&amp;#039; did want to eventually continue her career she didn&amp;#039;t do so until much later down the road when her children were full grown. She was content with staying at home taking care of her husband and family. She was consumed with her family. She said, &amp;quot;...but I would never go anywhere unless he would go,&amp;quot; (referring to her husband). No longer were women working and creating their own wealth. They were again housewives and for the most part enjoyed being in that role. Personally I think because the idea of a women working and being away from the home and being a mother was fairly new, most didn&amp;#039;t think it was possible to juggle both or weren&amp;#039;t sure how to go about doing it. I think more men than women didn&amp;#039;t think it was possible otherwise the &amp;quot;problem that has no name&amp;quot; would not have arose. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Betty Bogs said, &amp;quot;I worked in a war plant and it was one of the things you did when your country was at war.&amp;quot; (P. 208) Just the way she said it made it sound like it was normal, and I think she is right in a sense&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. It was normal for women to go out and work; it was a way to help with the war effort. Her experience of loving her job seemed quite similar to the other Rosie the Riveters we have read about. I was surprised though, to see that she was going to school for a math degree, and even considered becoming a lab technician. At the time, I think it was frowned upon for women to be anything other than a housewife or a teacher. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even when I did my interview for our paper, my interviewee said the only jobs you went to school for were to be a teacher or a secretary.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Betty enjoyed working; I&amp;#039;m sure it was liberating to her because she was doing something many people frowned upon. It was also interesting how there was a prominent role reversal between Betty and her husband Josh. She was the one working, and her husband was the one who was with their baby more often and seemed to have a closer relationship with the child. Bogs said, &amp;quot;Josh had a good relationship built up, because he&amp;#039;d have Tad to himself.&amp;quot; (P. 210). And, her husband was completely okay with staying at home with the children while she worked!  The surprising part was, though, that although Betty loved her job and enjoyed working, she encouraged women to stay home with their children because it was important to their development. I guess that was the most surprising part to me. She worked so hard and had come so far, but realized that in the end, her family came first. -- Alex M. &lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading this article.  I find it rather ironic that today’s woman still struggles with the choice between staying home and raising her children and going out into the workplace.  Being an older student, I notice a number of my friends who have college degrees, including post-graduate degrees and have made the decision to forego a career or postpone their career to stay home with their children. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think that it is difficult to say what decision you will make regarding your kids until you are in the position of having to make the decision of leaving your child with someone else or working.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Betty Jeanne Boggs was fortunate to be married to someone willing to sacrifice his time to give her the opportunity to further her career and her husband was lucky to have a woman willing to support him while he finished school. - EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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Boggs obviously believed that a woman should be able to do anything a man could do, such as go to school and work in certain jobs.  However &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;for raising a kid she thinks that &amp;quot;a mother should be there the first couple of years of a child&amp;#039;s life,&amp;quot; (30)  Does this mean that she did not think it was a man&amp;#039;s place to raise a kid?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Obviously she felt that a man should help, as Josh helped plenty with Tad but their was never any mention of him giving up his education or his job.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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As EFritz was saying above, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it really is hard for a woman to judge another about their struggle of work and home until they are in that position.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Boggs was able to keep working, but mainly just because her husband was home more while continuing his education.  Had he already finished school, she would have had to end her career earlier.  It wasn&amp;#039;t as if he was like &amp;quot;Hey Honey, you keep on keepin&amp;#039; on at that job of yours and make me some money!&amp;quot; He understood how much easier it would be at the time to have the arrangement of work and home that way... In response to J Rowley&amp;#039;s question, I don&amp;#039;t think Boggs was implying that it was not a man&amp;#039;s place to raise a child.  As a mother, you feel a certain bond or connection with your child and not only want to be there in those initial year, but you feel a NEED to be there for your child.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I think this article was chosen to be the first for this section because it is still relevant to the struggles that women-and especially mothers, go through today. The struggle between wanting to be a full time caregiver and the desire to have a career and be successful in the field of your choosing do not always go hand in hand, and some places of employment are not as accommodating as one would like them to be. Rarely are “stay at home” dads the ideal image of American families even today. A stay at home dad contrasts to what people see as the “normal” family situation, while a stay at home mom is still seen as the norm. Women who choose to work full time, for any reason, still have to face criticism from other people about how they choose to raise their children. And sometimes those critics do not take into account the improvements in the standard of living that the child (or children) can potentially attain if the mother works or both parents work. Supporting the children should be the main objective, but many times that idea gets lost in what outsiders consider proper. –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rachel Carson Answers Her Critics==&lt;br /&gt;
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I am not the world&amp;#039;s biggest environmentalist and I still loved this article. Rachel Carson did an awesome job defending herself against her critics in this article and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;for some reason I was in disbelief that even back then people questioned the existance of environmental problems like pesticides and pollutions.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Ridiculous that her response &amp;quot;No, the problem of pesticides is not merely the dream of an avracious author, out to pile up royalties by frightening the public- it is very much with us, here and now&amp;quot; (page 229) even has to be made. Her proof of the levels of toxins in the dying animals was disgusting, to say the very least. and I completely agree with her statement that &amp;quot;A world that is no longer fit for wild plants that is no longer graced by the flights of birds, a world whose streams and forrests are empty and lifeless is not likely to be fit habitat for man himself, for these things are symptoms of an ailing world&amp;quot; (page 228). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She certainly won me over. (And I would especially &amp;#039;&amp;#039;buy some more Samoas&amp;#039;&amp;#039; to support her environmentalist cause.)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I know that earlier in this class we had talked about how women were often linked to the environmentalist cause so I tried to keep that in mind when I was reading this piece. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I am not sure if I could picture a man writing this with the same effect.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Most of the points she makes are very strong and she even seems to go against the point that she is saving nature only to save the beauty of it.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;However, if women were still connected to the environmentalist cause would she have an easier time winning them over because she was a woman?  Would she have a tougher time gaining support from men?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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J Rowley--good questions. What if Silent Spring had been written by a man? Gotta love theoreticals... I agreed that this was a very strong answer to all of her critics--stronger still because she didn&amp;#039;t specifically target any one person or company, and made it clear that she was not taking any of the criticism personally, and was thus not bothered by it:  &amp;quot;I am confident that the verdict of history will show that we...&amp;quot; She invokes history to her side, claiming that time will tell, as it ultimately did. Very smart.  --Sarah Smethurst &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;(Samoas FTW)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Sarah&amp;#039;s post, I think that it was Carson&amp;#039;s intention not to target one person, company, or group of people. During this period of time, when America was still feeling a backlash against women&amp;#039;s rights, it was tougher for women to gain momentum in anything they said or did. I think Carson realized this, and perhaps realized that she would be more effective if she left the boundaries opened and made a general statement, therefore gaining more support and respect from those who supported, and even more importantly those who opposed her.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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==Louisa Randall Church Explores the Duties of Parents as Architects of Peace, 1946==&lt;br /&gt;
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Out of Church’s fear of bombs, “in the hundreds and thousands,”(410) she decides that the only way to save the world is to raise children the right way. But aside from that, something struck me funny, the second full paragraph on page 411, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Church discusses the importance of raising children correctly, but keeps referring to the child as “he”, “when &amp;#039;&amp;#039;he&amp;#039;&amp;#039; has achieved complete control over &amp;#039;&amp;#039;himself&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and his environment. Only then can &amp;#039;&amp;#039;he&amp;#039;&amp;#039; meet the exigencies of worthy citizenship in the world of tomorrow.” So what does this say about the author’s view of the roles of girls in the future?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Do these rules listed by Church only apply to male children? Or perhaps it is the assumption that only the male children will be in the public arena and be able to make a difference in the “world of tomorrow” whereas female children will merely grow up to produce more children to raise in the same way her mother had? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Erin, I noticed that Church uses &amp;#039;he&amp;#039; throughout the piece, but I don&amp;#039;t necessarily think it was meant to indicate that girls were not valued, just &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;a quirk of grammar&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. She actually states quite clearly that in the near future women &amp;quot;will be taking their rightful place in world affairs,&amp;quot; and so girls should be &amp;quot;provided with the same opportunities&amp;quot; (pg. 411) as their brothers. She seems to hold a fairly egalitarian view of parenting, advocating that both mothers and fathers be involved in the lives of their children and consistently referring to the responsibilities of &amp;#039;parents&amp;#039; rather than simply the role of &amp;#039;mother. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Just&amp;quot; a quirk of grammar? I wonder that if this, and similar use of gendered language throughout history is just a &amp;quot;quirk of grammar,&amp;quot; and if so, why people get upset over phrases like &amp;quot;rule of thumb,&amp;quot; whether or not the supposed history of that phrase is true or not, the implications of that phrase is what makes it contentious. The use of gendered language carries powerful messages that convey female-ness as weak, passive, powerless, etc. while the opposite is true with male-oriented language. I think that there is more meaning to a woman who seems &amp;quot;almost a feminist&amp;quot; because of some of her arguments using such a &amp;quot;quirk of grammar&amp;quot; than we seem to accord it--surely a woman as conscious as Church about women&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;rightful place in society&amp;quot; would not use &amp;quot;he&amp;quot; out of expediency or convenience. Maybe it sheds some light into pervading conceptions of women&amp;#039;s identities and how they related to the whole--if not in general, then at least from Church&amp;#039;s point of view? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann&amp;#039;s statement above. One of Church&amp;#039;s main arguments for attaining personal security for children is equal rights between all children and not showing favoritism, as well as asserting that &amp;quot;neither the father nor mother should reign supreme&amp;quot; (411). Going along with equal rights between the sexes, she defends that &amp;quot;girls should be provided with the same opportunities, intellectually, professionally, socially and economically as boys&amp;quot; (411). If Church believed that only male citizens are valuable members of society, I don&amp;#039;t believe she would be encouraging parents to provide their daughters with the same opportunities. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also found the wording of Church&amp;#039;s essay interesting when she states &amp;quot;women will be taking their &amp;#039;&amp;#039;rightful&amp;#039;&amp;#039; places in society&amp;quot; (411). This almost sounds feminist. It seems like Church is arguing that women have been denied something they were entitled to all along-an equal place with men in all worldly affairs.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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==Nonconformist Joyce Johnson Recounts Her Experience in Obtaining an Illegal Abortion in New York City, 1955==&lt;br /&gt;
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Getting an abortion now seems like it would be a horrible, isolating experience. It is still so controversial that even if a woman makes that decision and is happy with it, she has to face judgment from everyone around her. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Getting an abortion in 1955 seems like it would be so much worse.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Abortion was to be unspoken of and it was really dangerous. In order to find a person to carry out an illegal abortion Joyce Johnson had to ask friends and friends of friends, all of whom probably judged her. She ended up having to meet a shady guy in a restaurant who had some sick obsession with helping girls get abortions. Joyce was truly alone through the entire process. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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To add, The fact that single women would rather face danger and health risks to have an illegal abortion than have a baby shows the amount of pressure that these women were under to fit into a mold. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;To Joyce Johnson, an abortion was living and having a child meant dying. That is a pretty serious statement.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Regardless of one&amp;#039;s moral idea on the subject, I have to say the idea of having a child to many young women today is still the equivalent of dying. If only 1955 had been more acceptable towards the use of contraception, then less women, like Joyce Johnson, would have had to make the decision to stop an unplanned pregnancy. Still, it is disgusting that this decision today, and in 1955, was considered a PUBLIC decision in regards to laws and social acceptability. I still think today that ultra-coservatives would be more willing to forgive a serial rapist and murderer than a woman who made the decision to NOT ruin her life, career, societal standing, education, dreams, ambition, etc., to have an abortion. Based upon unplanned pregnancy levels just because the opportunity to have an abortion is there doesn&amp;#039;t mean that one is going to take advantage of that option. It is a very hard, and very personal decision; Which I think Joyce Johnson did an amazing job conveying. It isn&amp;#039;t fair that a male can have sex unprotected for fun and not have to deal with the same consequences (which the article implied that Joyce Johnson just knew that it was as much of an obligation to the father as it was to her which i would LOVE to have more information upon... was this the thinking of society as a whole at the time? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Was a man financially obligated to take care of the situation? How did that notion change into what it is today?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;)in today&amp;#039;s world even with sexual protection opportunities. Contradictory to her belief on his financial responsibility however I found it interesting that she said &amp;quot;Life was considered sacred. But independence could be punishable by death. The punishment for sex was, appropriately, sexual&amp;quot; (page 419) which is seemingly contradictory to the financial responsibility she felt he had. I totally support her on that statement though. A woman&amp;#039;s right to choose her life ends in this country when a zygote is involved, yet if she were sexually assaulted or raped the legal system would find a way to blame her as the Victim, instead of the male who was just acting naturally. more proof that the punishment for sex is appropriately sexual. I think having an abortion is something that Joyce Johnson thought about roughly, probably lost a ton of sleep over, and I&amp;#039;m happy that she had the opportunity to fly to Puerto Rico to get it done (although, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m also sadly suprised that having a legal abortion at a facility in Puerto Rico would be safer than an illegal one in the United States...??&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;) because if she hadn&amp;#039;t had that opportunity then she would have been stuck with an unloved child and husband, and a disdain for their involvement in her life. Obviously, I feel very strongly in support of Joyce Johnson&amp;#039;s decision to take control of her livelihood, and believe that because of this experience she, and the boy who knocked her up, would in the future both be more careful in regards to sexual activity. It wasn&amp;#039;t a simple solution and from this article I can only imagine the disgust I would feel towards the society who would judge her for such a decision. It&amp;#039;s amazing how morality derived from the teachings of the Catholic Church, in their passage onto the other christian faiths based upon them, play such an unfortunate role historically in the lives of Women in the United States, yet Boys will just be boys. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Ssellers. The U.S. didn&amp;#039;t give her an option. How could the &amp;quot;Land of the Free&amp;quot; criticize one of it&amp;#039;s citizens for taking advantage of an opportunity that the state refused to give?-Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;interesting that the doctor in Canarsie was clearly against abortions, as he didn’t even use the word “abortion” and admonished Johnson, telling her “don’t ever let me catch you back here again, young lady!” (421), yet he still was willing to perform the operation.  Why was that?  Did his concern for women’s safety, the fear that they might turn to someone incompetent, override his opposition to the procedure?  And were most doctors who performed illegal abortions like him, or did they genuinely believe the women had a right to the procedure?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I like Alice found interesting that the doctor described other procedures he performed but would not dare mention abortion. I do not think he really cared about women&amp;#039;s health, I think he was worried that if women came to him who were pregnant and wanted abortions one he would know they were pregnant outside of marriage and two he did not want people (government) to find out he was performing them, at the time I feel like he could of lost his license if it was found out. Maybe he did care about women but with all the precautions he took and the way he spoke to Joyce I have to say I do not think he did, he may of just been a doctor who did not believe in having children outside of marriage. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Regardless of everyone&amp;#039;s outrage at the stigma attached to abortions during most of the twentieth century and up to today, why wouldn&amp;#039;t it have been a public decision? Pushing aside my own feelings towards abortion and trying to stay away from issues of morality or immorality, shouldn&amp;#039;t our society be concerned about demographics? For example, during the early years of the twentieth century in the US and in the pre-WW2 years in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany we saw government incentives for parents to have more children, because (at least in the latter two) they had a national security interest in seeing higher birth rates. Americans at the turn of the century (and arguably still today) were concerned that low birth rates and abortions among upper and middle class whites would lead to &amp;quot;racial suicide.&amp;quot; When people at the time thought in this manner, why wouldn&amp;#039;t abortion become a public decision? It seems that it made sense for that time in history and arguably even today--unless one thinks that we should all go our separate ways and that individual decisions do not affect society as a whole. I think the decision to take a pregnancy to term or abort has drastic consequences (although unforeseen) for society insofar as determining the demographics of that society in years to come. And if the argument that men should provide financially for the women that they impregnate and either assist in expenses or pay for an abortion is ironic in that it perpetuates the idea that women cannot provide for themselves, and is a form of protectionist legislation that we saw in earlier years such as Muller v. Oregon. I feel that as one of the few men in the class I should just come out and state my stance on abortion--I am all for it, especially as a male I feel as though no matter what my personal convictions are as far as morality and life and etc., it&amp;#039;s not my body and it&amp;#039;s not my choice. Personal liberty is important to me, which is why I support the ability of women to have abortion, and also the same reason why I oppose legislation that demands men to take financial responsibility for these matters--it&amp;#039;s a violation of personal liberty. And no, I&amp;#039;m sure that it isn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;fair&amp;quot; that men can &amp;quot;have fun&amp;quot; and not have to deal with the same consequences, but that isn&amp;#039;t something that can be legislated into equality. On a different note, the stigma attached to abortions then and now--it doesn&amp;#039;t just come from oppressive conservative men, but it comes from women as well. Not just the Bible-thumpers, but from young, college-aged liberal-esque women who for all their proclamations of being prochoice, still seem to find ways to label their fellow women who have found some level of sexual liberation and have fun, like men have supposedly been doing for ages, various derogatory terms. An example of this would be all the dirty looks and hushed whispers I&amp;#039;ve seen and heard on this campus from girls directed towards girls who have had abortions. Again, women cannot be socially oppressed by just men, other women take part in it and I want to know why--what do women have to gain by perpetuating certain stigmas and conceptions? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was horrifying. The measures that Joanna had to take to get an abortion in New York City seemed so...for lack of a better word sketchy, that they would have seemed better placed in a bad movie. it was really sad to see the measures that women were reduced to in order to obtain the procedure, like meeting a creep at the Rainbow room that wants to take you back to fire island for some post abortion &amp;quot;relaxation&amp;quot;. With stories like this it is no wonder that women like Margaret Sanger were moved to action. The worst part about this story is that Joanna was probably one of the lucky ones in that she seemingly had a safe operation without any harmful side affects. I&amp;#039;d hate to think about how many women were not so lucky.-Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;An Unplanned Pregnancy&amp;quot;, by Joanna Rubin==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article to be &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;fascinating, insightful and harrowing&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. I wonder &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;what audience Joanna Rubin was writing for and after having her abortion at a time when it was illegal, what made her be so willing to share her story.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Were abortions also illegal in Puerto Rico at that time? I know Rubin did not see any other Americans at her clinic, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;was it a likely occurrence that American women would go to Puerto Rico or other countries for the procedure?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; My curiosity was piqued about the beliefs of American doctors after the line, &amp;quot;When I found out I was pregnant, I went to see a doctor, and he told me to come and see him afterwards. I had a low-grade infection. He was very sweet, supportive, gave me antibiotics&amp;quot; (217).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Did American Doctors refer their patients to unofficial clinics that they knew off or simply accept that it was inevitable? As it was illegal, were doctors encouraged to turn in women who got abortions? Were there any actions taken against these women? For me, this article raised a lot more questions about what was typical than it answered.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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To answer one of the questions raised above, I think maybe Joanna Rubin decided to tell her story because she needed to tell people, mainly women, that even though she knew that she wanted an abortion it was still a hard decision to make. She said, &amp;quot;Although I didn&amp;#039;t for a minute think I didn&amp;#039;t want the abortion, it was still a very, very heavy experience. It isn&amp;#039;t &amp;#039;Oh, this is a cool, easy decision to make, and there are no consequences.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;(217) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She wanted to make sure that women knew that abortion wasn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;taking the easy way out,&amp;quot; it was scary, intimidating, and probably created a feeling of guilt which may be another reason for her writing this piece.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also was wondering about the number of women that went to Puerto Rico and other countries to receive abortions during this time. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think when comparing this abortion story of Joanna to the other story of Jocye Johnson, it reveals that pregnancy was a very real and scary thing for women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Both these women made desperate attempts to get an abortion, while still weighing the heavy costs of pain (both physical and emotional), injury,  and possible death. This story, in particular shows the willingness and hardships Joanna faced to get an abortion; it meant she had to leave the country just to do so.  It shows that pregnancy and abortion were real fears for young women, who had little to no access of birth control.  I think that it was included to show that there was a real need for contraceptive information in the 50&amp;#039;s and 60&amp;#039;s and what would lead to the landmark courtcase &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Roe v Wade&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I commend Joanna Rubin for writing her story at a time when abortion was illegal in the United States, I feel that she wanted other women to know that they were not alone. I think that even though Joanna knew she was going to get an abortion no questions asked she knew any woman who gets an abortion would feel a burden on her shoulders. I agree with abratchi this article made me think of Birth Control clinics and how there was a strong need for them not just for married women but any woman who wanted to learn about the risks, symptoms, or who to talk to when they found out they were pregnant. Even today I feel that more women should learn about the risks of pregnancy and how shows on MTV such as 16 and pregnant (while not the high quality) are a reality and show that all it takes is one time and you can be pregnant. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Did women even think about an abortion possibly killing them?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Such as the woman in Margaret Sanger’s Epiphany over Birth Control article who died from a self induced abortion because she couldn’t handle another child. Of course there is always the possibility that child birth could also kill them. Abortion seems a lot more risky though, especially being illegal like it was. Abortion clinics surely couldn’t be regulated and keep safe because there weren’t any governmental policies or standards to be enforced. I would much rather have the child and give it up for an abortion, quietly, than risk dying from a painful abortion that could lead to a deadly infection. That’s just my opinion though; maybe they were too afraid of being pregnant in the first place to think straight and logically. Even though Ms. Rubin thinks that this is a “real clinic” and it “alleviated a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear,” (216) obviously it wasn’t much of facility because she did get “a low-grade infection,” (217). I know that she was in hast to rid herself of being pregnant, but you would think that she would be smarter about her decisions. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She obviously wasn’t going to tell her family, as Rubin describes, “I didn’t have any support from my parents,” (216), possibly because being a sexual women was taboo? Even if that was so, the least they could do was help her or were families that unsupportive of their daughters? I really can’t see a father and, partially, a mother abandoning their child in such a desperate situation.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Morgan above, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I feel pretty much the opposite way about everything she said.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Yes abortion was risky but so was pregnancy and childbirth. This woman was young, unwed, and in school.  If she were to have had the child she would have lost everything in life that she worked so hard for.  She may have been able to have the child quietly and gave it up, but who would have paid for it and where would she have gone? Her parents would have likely shunned her out of their lives, she didn&amp;#039;t have the money, the &amp;quot;father&amp;quot; of the baby didn&amp;#039;t have money. She would have had to take months off of school, and how would she have explained that?  And perhaps she could have gotten an infection from the abortion, but women were not sitting around gabbing about abortions so it&amp;#039;s not like they had first-hand accounts to go off of, just heresay and gossip.  I feel she was not &amp;quot;in hast,&amp;quot; she clearly weighed her options and knew what would have happen if she would have had a baby in her position.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Joanna Rubin’s piece “An Unplanned Pregnancy” was touching and interesting. I think that Rubin was attempting to express the fact that there was regret involved but she did what she thought was right. I agree with Christine, here is a young woman who did not love the person that impregnated her, in her first year of Grad school. If she did love him, she “might have kept it” (217) but she didn’t.  Which is a better choice, to live a life with a child and a husband whom you do not love and resent? Or go to any lengths, in this case, Puerto Rico, to have an abortion. She admits that this was a hard decision with consequences.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It also seems that her personal doctor was not completely opposed to her choice “When I found out I was pregnant, I went to see a doctor and he had told me to come and see him afterwards”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (217). He even gave her antibiotics. I was wondering how often doctors helped patients who went to have abortions out of the country or illegally? –Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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i think this piece really shows how alone women felt, and the total isolation that came along with an unwanted pregnancy. Rubin really had no one to turn to except the father of the baby who she did not love. At least today while an abortion is not a gratifying prospect to any woman, it is legal and women aren&amp;#039;t forced to undergo isolating and often unsafe procedures. The fact that her Doctor was understanding afterwards and gave her antibiotics to treat her infection made it seem like while Doctors could not perform the procedures they were sympathetic and did what they could. So while this Doctor was unwilling to perform the procedure, he was willing to be discreet and to treat her for the infection she got obtaining an illegal abortion. Perhaps there was some feeling of guilt behind his actions, I think if I was a Doctor I would feel guilty that I was knowingly turning women away and forcing them to take extreme measures against an unwanted pregnancy. -Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;The Problem That Has No Name,&amp;quot; Betty Friedan, 1963==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think, more than anything, what got to these women was the isolation involved in being the perfect domestic housewife.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; This was an age of single family homes, of cars instead of public transportation, of cleaning quietly in the kitchen rather than enjoying a laugh with the other women over lunch at the defense plant like the women interviewed in the video we watched. These women&amp;#039;s lives revolved around a home that for a significant portion of the day she shared with perhaps a mildly communicative infant or no one at all if her children were old enough to be in school. Sure she went out to do the shopping and interacted with people through that, but she always ultimately returned to her empty house that constantly reminded her of further chores she needed to accomplish. And no matter how many friends women did have, they&amp;#039;d still feel isolated in that they couldn&amp;#039;t share with their friends what was truly on their minds, thinking themselves all alone in their feelings of desperation and boredom. It&amp;#039;s telling that just a simple acknowledgment that friends shared similar thoughts could cause women to break down and cry &amp;quot;just to know they are not alone.&amp;quot; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Mary Ann raised an important point about Betty Freidan’s excerpt, to know that you were not alone in how you felt about your duties as a wife, mother, and the home.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Women were facing societal implications that if you felt that you wanted more or even a career that this meant that you could not be worthy or could not fulfill those duties. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; If you step outside of those roles of the home, does that make you less able to maintain them?  In the 1950’s, you were looked down upon if you did, did it make you less of a mother and wife?  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It became a moral dilemma.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Women had to maintain that ideal picture, they felt the pressure that limited options for self fulfillment for women in those roles.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I play the scene in my mind, the husband saying, “Oh dear, why are you not happy, you have more than any woman could ever want?” (no pressure here.)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Freidan found in talking with other women that she was not alone in her thoughts.  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Women at this time were dealing with such an immense problem. Prior to WWII, they had obtained universal suffrage, and then more independence through the work place while their husbands were in combat. Suddenly, when their husbands returned their extensive independence disappeared as well. Many would would have been scrutinized by their husbands or their peers for complaining about the lifestyle changes they encountered. It is not surprising to see them internalize many of their doubts and fears regarding their complacency or position in society. Over time, it is evident that the problem that women encountered disappeared, and women began to obtain more control of their own lives and leverage in society. Friedan was a pioneer in exploring communication and bonds between women.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this passage very interesting and thought provoking.  Women had a brief glimpse of life in the workplace during World War II, but when the men came home, they again assumed their traditional role as a housewife.  This excerpt mainly revolves around the question: Is this all our lives&amp;#039; will amount to?  Many obviously wanted more than what a housewife provided and some felt almost incomplete doing the monotonous work of daily chores.  However, I think now, especially after doing my interview that this work could not only be difnified but also quite challenging.  The person who I interviewed said her daughter in law is a stay at home mom and she works harder than anybody she knows.  I expect these women to wish for more after many of them had jobs for years, but their work can be just as hard as many respects as what the men are doing. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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== Psychiatrist Marynia F. Farnham and Sociologist Ferdinand Lundberg Denounce the Modern Woman as the &amp;quot;Lost Sex,&amp;quot; 1947 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Oy vey, these women are something, aren’t they? Much like the women of the 19th century who went out into the public to tell women to get back into the house where they belonged, we’ve got a psychiatrist and a sociologist telling women that they shouldn’t have jobs. It just blows the mind. According to them, women who work are neurotic and unfeminine, and they ignore their family duties for their jobs and became resentful towards men. Are they speaking from personal experience, because, you know, they &amp;#039;&amp;#039;have jobs themselves&amp;#039;&amp;#039;? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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The idea of “feminine relinquishment” was interesting.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It seems strange that if you had a career outside of the home, that meant you lost you feminine qualities.  But when there was an ideal perception of family, that locked women in those roles, it made it difficult to go anywhere else without consequences.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I never thought about it as woman were living “dangerously” if women tried to juggle both work and home.  Everyone seems to suffer for the wife’s aspirations.  Who would want to leave the home if they felt they would destroy their family? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think that Farnham and Lundberg were vividly describing the moral dilemmas women were facing if they tried to work and take care of the family.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought these women were quite bold in some of their statements.  I thought that it was interesting how they equated women working outside the home as becoming more masculine, as MHimes above me stated.  They seem to believe that a woman could not possibly be feminine if working outside the home, which caused an internal struggle in women who worked while having household responsibilities, like a husband and children.  They seem to really find danger to a woman&amp;#039;s feminity if she is engaged in work, which in turn negatively affects men.  They appear as advocates of the this new modern cult of domesticity that was emerging in the post war period, it seems. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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At first glance, these writers describe the &amp;quot;Modern Woman&amp;quot; of 1947, as one who appears to have her own destiny within her grasp.  She is now conflicted however, because she has more responsibility; to the home, children, and to work. I found this article interesting because the writers argue the modern woman of their time is now struggling to retain femininity because she is in the &amp;quot;dangerous position of having to live one part of her life on the masculine level, [and] another on the feminine.&amp;quot;(413) Is the need to be equal to men and their accomplishments what caused this rivalry? I never really thought of how damaging the social and psychological barriers were in Post-War War II America. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I understand women proved what they were capable of, but what I am still curious about is how hard was it for women to switch back to dependence of their husbands when they knew they were just as capable in the workforce.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; From the videos we saw in class, I gathered that many women found pride that they could do skilled labor, but this article brings up a good perspective I think. From my interpretation the perspective is that women&amp;#039;s success has to be achieved through a balance of dependence and independence in their role in the household. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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==Taylor, Women Strike for Peace==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I can’t help but chuckle anytime HUAC gets the run around.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Just imagine being in that courtroom. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Middle-class, supposedly meek and compliant little housewives and mothers with their pristine white gloves being accused of Communist activity; even if they did have Communist sympathies, no one would believe it. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;It sounds like these women used the housewife image well in their campaign for peace.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Much like the women of the 19th century reform movement, they justified being involved in politics with their concerns as wives and mothers. And much like the reform women, they embraced and contradicted the ideal image of femininity at the same time. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the WSP to be extremely hypocritical. On one hand Ethel Baron Taylor is complaining about how &amp;quot;women are not in positions of power and they have no role in policy-making&amp;quot; (218) , and on the other she chooses to get her point across by portraying her organization in a way that makes them seem submissive and powerless. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even though she is fighting to obtain more power for women through this group, she inadvertently still relies on men. It particularly disturbed me when she waited for a man to help her out of the police van after being arrested; If Taylor can&amp;#039;t handle a five foot jump without a man guiding her, how are we supposed to take her cause seriously?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I saw WSP as more sly and manipulative.  They knew that the most effective way to get a woman&amp;#039;s voice heard was to play up those female stereotypes, especially in court&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  No judge would throw out a bunch of sweet women who weren&amp;#039;t doing anything wrong!  And they couldn&amp;#039;t go militant or get too forceful with their protests.  That kind of thing tends to irritate and annoy people rather than make them agreeable to the cause.  I just think that if you&amp;#039;re going to go with that method, you can&amp;#039;t complain about being treated like a stereotype afterwards.  So, Taylor complaining about wanting to be treated equally while manipulating the female stereotypes is definitely hypocritical.  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with CBrau. I love the women of the WSP! I found them hilarious and very manipulative. These women obviously knew exactly how to get attention and to use there femininity against political figures to buy for attention. But did these women really think that just because they were women nothing would happen to them? “They’re not going to electrocute me, They’re not going to shoot me,” (218) said Taylor while she was deciding to cross the street or not. Did she think this because she was a woman and surely men wouldn’t hurt her? I guess the stereotypes of that generation weren’t to hurt women, even if they were criminals? They were so outspoken though, even when in the presence of court, “we would present her with a bouquet, and we would applaud,” (220) but they weren’t thrown out of court. I wonder if in the decades before if they were even allowed in court, much less speak out. It appears to me that they were mainly a spectacle looking for attention towards their cause, even if it endangered them. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this piece was charming.  I absolutely love the visual of these women in their pretty little dresses with matching shoes and handbag, white gloves, hats and perfectly coiffed hair being brought in to testify before Congress.  I am no anti-war activist but I think these women had the backbone to petition their government to change the course of history, all before they had to get home and prepare dinner for their families and help their children with their homework.  And they still wanted to be treated as ladies, even while they were being hauled off to jail.  What irony. - EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t necessarily agree with their political opinions, but I&amp;#039;m just saying...their personality would be a good thing to have. Their spunk would continue to entertain people.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;Star Struck,&amp;quot; Vicki L. Ruiz ==&lt;br /&gt;
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All these articles are important in our understanding of the past and how it continues to shape the present. However, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found this article in particular to be especially important because generations later the poverty and degradation of Mexican Americans is still the reality. The Mexican American women from the 1920&amp;#039;s to 1950&amp;#039;s written about in this article could easily be Mexican American women today.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  All the issues they faced in the first half of the twentieth century are the same battles they fight today in the beginning of the twenty-first century, with little to no improvement. Perhaps it is because &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;unlike other immigrant groups, the Latina community continues to emigrate and despite having been an essential part of our nation for an extended time, they are perceived to be the “new guys.”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -- Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article could easily be related to today and how women are percieved or told how they should be percieved in the media. While I feel that many immigrant groups wanted to promote their culture, especially the Mexican Americans through language and traditions, the children of immigrant parents wanted to assimilate into American culture, and the leading way in California was through &amp;quot;the public fascination with Hollywood.&amp;quot;(367). Today, things have still not changed infact I believe we as a society have become more fascinated with Hollywood and how it defines America, I cannot even count how many times I have heard the story about Sandra Bullock and her husband and very little on world affairs or even the healthcare bill. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Being from Southern California, I can definately relate to this article and many of the points that are made here are definately still relevant today, many years later.  Many still live in poverty and are often treated as second class citizens.  There are tons of farming fields in the area, and you can generally only see mexicans out there picking.  It&amp;#039;s not that they choose this lifestyle, just that they are somehow relegated to do it.  One interesting thing the article mentions is that there was no gradual immersion language program and it was just &amp;quot;sink or swim in an English-only environment&amp;quot; (365).  I beleive this still holds true today, although it is somewhat better.  I knew some who hardly spoke english and were just thrown into an english-speaking environment, and this incredibly difficult to adapt.  Another interesting point is that being &amp;quot;Spanish&amp;quot; had a somewhat positive connotation whereas being &amp;quot;Mexican&amp;quot; was a negative connotation.  They speak the same language yet being from Mexico somehow makes you worse than being from Spain.  The thing that stands out to me the most is that people then and even now seem to have a pre-conceived notion that mexicans are inherently lower class than Americans, but they are people, just like we are. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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==Indian Relocation, Wilma Mankiller==&lt;br /&gt;
The hardships that Indians peoples faced throughout the 19th and 20th century had clear impacts.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This experience by one Indian girl who was forced to leave her town in Oklahoma for California was heartbreaking.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  This girl had to endure leaving her entire life, at the expense of the US Government who thought they were offering “a wonderful opportunity for Indian families to get great jobs, obtain good educations for their kids and, once and for all, leave poverty behind” (212).  This girls life did not get easier, but harder, emotionally and financially.  It is a clear example of how racial minorities were again, uprooted from their lives.  Wilma explains how she was teased because of her last name and how she knew she was clearly different from the other children, who knew as well.  This must have had lasting impacts on her as she grew and matured. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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The history of Native Americans deserves just as much credit as African Americans or Women&amp;#039;s history. This story of Indian relocation is just one of the many very sad experiences of what  United States policy has put them through.  The sadist part of it all is that they were here first! This particular story shows that even in the 1950s the US was still relocating 60,000 Indians thinking we had the right to &amp;quot;mainstream &amp;quot; them into Urban areas. After reading this depressing story it make me feel extremely grateful that Native Americans are no longer treated in this way and made me realize if anyone in the USA should be the most proud to be American, it should be all the Native Americans left today that still retain their cultures. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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Just as with the Japanese internment camps during World War II, I feel like the US government was good at alienating various racial/ethnic groups in America. The Indians had already been forcibly removed once (The Trail of Tears) but to do it again is just horrible. The fact that the government changed it mind all of a sudden was both disturbing to the American Indian way of life, but also scarred them emotionally and in many other ways, which is similar to what abratchi said above. What is most awful is how the Mankiller family had so much trouble adapting.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; How could the government just take the Indians from their old way of life and drop them into bustling urban/industrial cities, where they have no idea what to do, how to act, and are seen as aliens to the country, even though they were Americans.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It was sad to read about how the girls were made fun of at school, and as a result they &amp;quot;sat up late every night reading aloud to each other to get rid of our accents.&amp;quot; (P. 214). These girls were so ashamed of their ancestry, which was even sadder. Why was it so necessary to assimilate different cultures into American culture? Why couldn&amp;#039;t white Americans just simply coexist with minority groups and accept one another for their differences instead of displacing them physically as well as emotionally? Wilma Mankiller used the word &amp;quot;alienation&amp;quot; which I think is a perfect word to describe this situation. These Indians were alienated from their homes, culture and just life in general and the worst part of all of it was that this relocation didn&amp;#039;t help the government in any way. So in the end, both the government and the Indians lost. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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This line really caught my attention:  &amp;quot;He (Wilma&amp;#039;s father) must have honestly believed that in a distant city he could provide a better life for his children, with all the modern amenities&amp;quot; (p. 212).  Interesting, considering Wilma and her family were very poor and I&amp;#039;m assuming isolated from modern civilization at Mankiller Flats.  So how did Wilma&amp;#039;s father know about modern civilization and the chances it offered?  From talking to the BIA?  From going to Boarding School?  From working?  Or perhaps it really was their poverty that convinced him they needed to move and try for a new life (despite the risks and separation from home).  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting how she almost plays off the decision to move to California as her parents decisions that they made without the force of governmental pressure. Yes there were no weapons forcing them to move or marching them down a path they did not want to take, but the propaganda for leaving (the promise of a better life, the false advertisements of wealth and opportunity) would have been enough to get any group of people to leave their homelands, especially if they had been used to poverty for an extended period of time. The American government does not have the best track record when it comes to handling relations with other ethnicities and races in terms of making equal opportunities available. Ghettos turned ethnic enclaves seem to be a recurring theme in American minority history, and each minority group has had an impact on the development of the America that exists today, therefore each group does deserve to have recognition, not just the African Americans and women, but the Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps, the chicano Americans who were limited in their migration but who were instrumental in making the US a transcontinental commerce, and finally the Native Americans, who suffered every time white Americans wanted to move and take their land. No group should be excluded in American history and none should be excluded in how they are remembered and honored today. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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==A Letter to the Editor of &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Ladder&amp;#039;&amp;#039; from an African American Lesbian, 1957==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The issue of appearance and whether or not minority groups should dress according to the standards of “the dominant social group” was interesting here.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Conforming to their standards might be a way for a lesbian (or an African American or any other minority group) to prove that she was “normal” and that her sexuality should not be a determining factor of her standing in society.  On the other hand, not conforming to these standards would be a way to say “I don’t care what you think.”  The writer seems to think it shouldn’t matter either way, as she expresses  the hope that “someday…the ‘discreet’ Lesbian will not turn her head on the streets at the sight of the ‘butch’ strolling hand in hand with her friend in their trousers and definitive haircuts” (422).  It’s something modern lesbians could identify with, as there are many women for whom appearance is still a big concern, as they do not want the stereotype of the “manly” lesbian to be the only thing others think of.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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The Letter to the editor of The Ladder was very interesting.  I agree with Alice on many points. I was also intrigued by her account of the struggle that women faced in general, whether they were homosexual or not. She explains “Women, like other oppressed groups of one kind or another, have particularly had to pay a price for the intellectual impoverishment that the second class status imposed on us for centuries” (421). It must have been comforting for lesbian women to have these publications out there.  As  MP explained in the preface to the chapter, The Ladder was the first American lesbian publication. Upon further research, I found that The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States and was edited by Phyllis Lyon, co founder of Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian organization. As the writer of the letter noted, this publication was “a fine elementary step in a rewarding direction” (421). It seems like a publication such as The Ladder was a step forward in bringing the lesbian community together while portraying a positive image of lesbian women to the public, something that was beyond taboo at the time. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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==African American Pauli Murray Explains Why Negro Girls Stay Single, 1947==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this piece a mix of saddening, isolating, and devastating. I felt like there was no hope at all for the African American woman in any aspect of life, especially in finding love. She could aspire to better herself and get an education, but wouldn’t be able to find a job that would pay her equal to white women. She could look for a husband and she wouldn’t find one. This must have been the harshest reality to find; that African American just were not available and, those that were, did not want to marry her type of a woman. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She “often has a potential earning power far beyond the range of the majority of available singe males-a social handicap if she wants marriage,” (416).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; A &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;man’s partner making more than him must have been emasculating.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Men did not want to be subordinate to women in any way or in any race, as history has shown us; he always wanted to be the breadwinner for the family. “He is the victim of constant frustration in his role as a male because socially he is subordinate to the white women although he is trained to act as a member of the dominate sex,” (417). African American men were already seen as of lesser value than white women, and yet to be dominate in their own race. How could they be dominate while they were lesser in society than white women, less educated than African American women, and brought home less money to support their families? Because African American men were so emotionally broken by their place in the hierarchy of society as well as their role as African American men, women had no chance to find a strong male partner. Without such a partner or the potential to find one, I would feel isolated in society too. -Morgan M&lt;br /&gt;
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This reminded me so much of this wonderful non-fiction piece called &amp;quot;The Ghetto Girls&amp;#039; Guide to Dating and Romance&amp;quot; by Sonja Livingston. Check it out. ANYWAYS  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also heard echoes of the &amp;quot;double burden&amp;quot; idea of being both black and a woman:  &amp;quot;the Negro woman finds herself at the bottom of the economic and social scale.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I imagine that Murray&amp;#039;s article was pretty darn controversial at the time--she talks unabashedly about the failings of black men, throwing her lot in with ostracized women who have spoken out with similar opinions. She makes a bold call to arms, and I&amp;#039;d be interested to know how that was taken. I&amp;#039;d imagine there was a lot of hate mail involved. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_11_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 11 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_11_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-04-01T06:24:01Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* &amp;quot;An Unplanned Pregnancy&amp;quot;, by Joanna Rubin */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;MAKE SURE TO ADD YOUR COMMENTS UNDER THE RELEVANT AUTHOR/TITLE HEADING (OR TO CREATE A NEW HEADING IF THERE ISN&amp;#039;T ONE YET)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;Balancing Work and Family,&amp;quot; Betty Jeanne Boggs ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;quot;Always this-- &amp;#039;because you&amp;#039;re a woman&amp;#039;&amp;quot; (page 208). I was really moved by this article and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;felt that as all of the articles get closer to current times, their revelance becomes so much more alarming.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I can&amp;#039;t believe that things written by females (what feels like) SO LONG AGO are still things that I look at society today and think are completely ridiculous. I did, however, really appreciate her husband in this article. FINALLY, a good man in history who wasn&amp;#039;t pushing his wife into the home. He encouraged her to work while he finished school because she liked her work, even though they were married, and when they accidentially got married he still wanted her to continue working because he KNEW how much she liked her job. I wish there were more historically based documents that talked about things like this just because it makes things not always depressing. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I still felt strong emotions towards her statement &amp;quot;For one thing, I wanted to stay home with the baby; two, I wanted to help Josh get through; three, I really enjoyed that job. I just didn&amp;#039;t know what to do about it, because I enjoyed working and yet I thought I should really be home with that baby&amp;quot; (page 210)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; because it&amp;#039;s something that I feel goes above the issue of sex and into the issue of parenthood. I can&amp;#039;t imagine it&amp;#039;s ever easy to look at your child bonding more with your husband/wife and NOT feel like you may be missing out on something because you feel like you have obligations that don&amp;#039;t allow that access. I am sure that her husband felt the exact same way when he looked at her relationship with the children, though, because in a family it always seems greener on the other side. I feel as though this article truly represents a healthy relationship between husband and wife, and every insecurity that Betty Jeanne Boggs felt about working while she had a husband was something that was based upon society, not upon her husbands actions. This could just be my wishful thinking, but it&amp;#039;s nice to imagine. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I admire this woman for paving the way for working mothers, if only for a time, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also noticed her husband&amp;#039;s willingness to rely on her for income while he finished school and often stayed home with their son. His attitude appears remarkably progressive for a time when many thought men should be resuming their places as heads of households after the war.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also noticed how conflicted the author felt about both wanting to work and wanting to be at home with her children, saying she &amp;quot;wanted to be in two places at one time.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I went to the Great Lives lecture on Rosie the Riveter tonight, and the speaker quoted a poll taken during WWII about the most admired women in America. First was Eleanor Roosevelt, and second was Betty Crocker,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and I think those contrasting results reflect the independence and work vs. domestic housewife dichotomy that women like the author experienced in those years. Many of today&amp;#039;s working mothers can turn to their mothers for advice on how to balance their different wants and obligations, but these women were part of the first generation of women, of middle class women especially, to really have any sort of opportunity to work outside of the home after having children. They were making it up as they went along. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I really like reading about Rosie the Riveters. They are definitely an inspiration for women. Sometimes, however, I read about a woman or hear her story as I did with Betty Jeanne Boggs&amp;#039; story, and  I feel that it&amp;#039;s a story about two different women. One part of the story is the rise of a more independent woman who relies on herself financially, has to take care of the children while the husband is off fighting the war, and is usually working at a labor-intensive job. They juggle everything fairly well for being on their own and even obtain raises in wages and in higher positions as in Boggs&amp;#039; case. As soon as the husbands come home and the war is over, a new woman appears. Even though Boggs&amp;#039; did want to eventually continue her career she didn&amp;#039;t do so until much later down the road when her children were full grown. She was content with staying at home taking care of her husband and family. She was consumed with her family. She said, &amp;quot;...but I would never go anywhere unless he would go,&amp;quot; (referring to her husband). No longer were women working and creating their own wealth. They were again housewives and for the most part enjoyed being in that role. Personally I think because the idea of a women working and being away from the home and being a mother was fairly new, most didn&amp;#039;t think it was possible to juggle both or weren&amp;#039;t sure how to go about doing it. I think more men than women didn&amp;#039;t think it was possible otherwise the &amp;quot;problem that has no name&amp;quot; would not have arose. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Betty Bogs said, &amp;quot;I worked in a war plant and it was one of the things you did when your country was at war.&amp;quot; (P. 208) Just the way she said it made it sound like it was normal, and I think she is right in a sense&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. It was normal for women to go out and work; it was a way to help with the war effort. Her experience of loving her job seemed quite similar to the other Rosie the Riveters we have read about. I was surprised though, to see that she was going to school for a math degree, and even considered becoming a lab technician. At the time, I think it was frowned upon for women to be anything other than a housewife or a teacher. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even when I did my interview for our paper, my interviewee said the only jobs you went to school for were to be a teacher or a secretary.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Betty enjoyed working; I&amp;#039;m sure it was liberating to her because she was doing something many people frowned upon. It was also interesting how there was a prominent role reversal between Betty and her husband Josh. She was the one working, and her husband was the one who was with their baby more often and seemed to have a closer relationship with the child. Bogs said, &amp;quot;Josh had a good relationship built up, because he&amp;#039;d have Tad to himself.&amp;quot; (P. 210). And, her husband was completely okay with staying at home with the children while she worked!  The surprising part was, though, that although Betty loved her job and enjoyed working, she encouraged women to stay home with their children because it was important to their development. I guess that was the most surprising part to me. She worked so hard and had come so far, but realized that in the end, her family came first. -- Alex M. &lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading this article.  I find it rather ironic that today’s woman still struggles with the choice between staying home and raising her children and going out into the workplace.  Being an older student, I notice a number of my friends who have college degrees, including post-graduate degrees and have made the decision to forego a career or postpone their career to stay home with their children. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think that it is difficult to say what decision you will make regarding your kids until you are in the position of having to make the decision of leaving your child with someone else or working.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Betty Jeanne Boggs was fortunate to be married to someone willing to sacrifice his time to give her the opportunity to further her career and her husband was lucky to have a woman willing to support him while he finished school. - EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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Boggs obviously believed that a woman should be able to do anything a man could do, such as go to school and work in certain jobs.  However &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;for raising a kid she thinks that &amp;quot;a mother should be there the first couple of years of a child&amp;#039;s life,&amp;quot; (30)  Does this mean that she did not think it was a man&amp;#039;s place to raise a kid?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Obviously she felt that a man should help, as Josh helped plenty with Tad but their was never any mention of him giving up his education or his job.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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As EFritz was saying above, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it really is hard for a woman to judge another about their struggle of work and home until they are in that position.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Boggs was able to keep working, but mainly just because her husband was home more while continuing his education.  Had he already finished school, she would have had to end her career earlier.  It wasn&amp;#039;t as if he was like &amp;quot;Hey Honey, you keep on keepin&amp;#039; on at that job of yours and make me some money!&amp;quot; He understood how much easier it would be at the time to have the arrangement of work and home that way... In response to J Rowley&amp;#039;s question, I don&amp;#039;t think Boggs was implying that it was not a man&amp;#039;s place to raise a child.  As a mother, you feel a certain bond or connection with your child and not only want to be there in those initial year, but you feel a NEED to be there for your child.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I think this article was chosen to be the first for this section because it is still relevant to the struggles that women-and especially mothers, go through today. The struggle between wanting to be a full time caregiver and the desire to have a career and be successful in the field of your choosing do not always go hand in hand, and some places of employment are not as accommodating as one would like them to be. Rarely are “stay at home” dads the ideal image of American families even today. A stay at home dad contrasts to what people see as the “normal” family situation, while a stay at home mom is still seen as the norm. Women who choose to work full time, for any reason, still have to face criticism from other people about how they choose to raise their children. And sometimes those critics do not take into account the improvements in the standard of living that the child (or children) can potentially attain if the mother works or both parents work. Supporting the children should be the main objective, but many times that idea gets lost in what outsiders consider proper. –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rachel Carson Answers Her Critics==&lt;br /&gt;
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I am not the world&amp;#039;s biggest environmentalist and I still loved this article. Rachel Carson did an awesome job defending herself against her critics in this article and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;for some reason I was in disbelief that even back then people questioned the existance of environmental problems like pesticides and pollutions.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Ridiculous that her response &amp;quot;No, the problem of pesticides is not merely the dream of an avracious author, out to pile up royalties by frightening the public- it is very much with us, here and now&amp;quot; (page 229) even has to be made. Her proof of the levels of toxins in the dying animals was disgusting, to say the very least. and I completely agree with her statement that &amp;quot;A world that is no longer fit for wild plants that is no longer graced by the flights of birds, a world whose streams and forrests are empty and lifeless is not likely to be fit habitat for man himself, for these things are symptoms of an ailing world&amp;quot; (page 228). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She certainly won me over. (And I would especially &amp;#039;&amp;#039;buy some more Samoas&amp;#039;&amp;#039; to support her environmentalist cause.)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I know that earlier in this class we had talked about how women were often linked to the environmentalist cause so I tried to keep that in mind when I was reading this piece. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I am not sure if I could picture a man writing this with the same effect.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Most of the points she makes are very strong and she even seems to go against the point that she is saving nature only to save the beauty of it.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;However, if women were still connected to the environmentalist cause would she have an easier time winning them over because she was a woman?  Would she have a tougher time gaining support from men?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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J Rowley--good questions. What if Silent Spring had been written by a man? Gotta love theoreticals... I agreed that this was a very strong answer to all of her critics--stronger still because she didn&amp;#039;t specifically target any one person or company, and made it clear that she was not taking any of the criticism personally, and was thus not bothered by it:  &amp;quot;I am confident that the verdict of history will show that we...&amp;quot; She invokes history to her side, claiming that time will tell, as it ultimately did. Very smart.  --Sarah Smethurst &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;(Samoas FTW)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Sarah&amp;#039;s post, I think that it was Carson&amp;#039;s intention not to target one person, company, or group of people. During this period of time, when America was still feeling a backlash against women&amp;#039;s rights, it was tougher for women to gain momentum in anything they said or did. I think Carson realized this, and perhaps realized that she would be more effective if she left the boundaries opened and made a general statement, therefore gaining more support and respect from those who supported, and even more importantly those who opposed her.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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==Louisa Randall Church Explores the Duties of Parents as Architects of Peace, 1946==&lt;br /&gt;
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Out of Church’s fear of bombs, “in the hundreds and thousands,”(410) she decides that the only way to save the world is to raise children the right way. But aside from that, something struck me funny, the second full paragraph on page 411, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Church discusses the importance of raising children correctly, but keeps referring to the child as “he”, “when &amp;#039;&amp;#039;he&amp;#039;&amp;#039; has achieved complete control over &amp;#039;&amp;#039;himself&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and his environment. Only then can &amp;#039;&amp;#039;he&amp;#039;&amp;#039; meet the exigencies of worthy citizenship in the world of tomorrow.” So what does this say about the author’s view of the roles of girls in the future?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Do these rules listed by Church only apply to male children? Or perhaps it is the assumption that only the male children will be in the public arena and be able to make a difference in the “world of tomorrow” whereas female children will merely grow up to produce more children to raise in the same way her mother had? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Erin, I noticed that Church uses &amp;#039;he&amp;#039; throughout the piece, but I don&amp;#039;t necessarily think it was meant to indicate that girls were not valued, just &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;a quirk of grammar&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. She actually states quite clearly that in the near future women &amp;quot;will be taking their rightful place in world affairs,&amp;quot; and so girls should be &amp;quot;provided with the same opportunities&amp;quot; (pg. 411) as their brothers. She seems to hold a fairly egalitarian view of parenting, advocating that both mothers and fathers be involved in the lives of their children and consistently referring to the responsibilities of &amp;#039;parents&amp;#039; rather than simply the role of &amp;#039;mother. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Just&amp;quot; a quirk of grammar? I wonder that if this, and similar use of gendered language throughout history is just a &amp;quot;quirk of grammar,&amp;quot; and if so, why people get upset over phrases like &amp;quot;rule of thumb,&amp;quot; whether or not the supposed history of that phrase is true or not, the implications of that phrase is what makes it contentious. The use of gendered language carries powerful messages that convey female-ness as weak, passive, powerless, etc. while the opposite is true with male-oriented language. I think that there is more meaning to a woman who seems &amp;quot;almost a feminist&amp;quot; because of some of her arguments using such a &amp;quot;quirk of grammar&amp;quot; than we seem to accord it--surely a woman as conscious as Church about women&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;rightful place in society&amp;quot; would not use &amp;quot;he&amp;quot; out of expediency or convenience. Maybe it sheds some light into pervading conceptions of women&amp;#039;s identities and how they related to the whole--if not in general, then at least from Church&amp;#039;s point of view? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann&amp;#039;s statement above. One of Church&amp;#039;s main arguments for attaining personal security for children is equal rights between all children and not showing favoritism, as well as asserting that &amp;quot;neither the father nor mother should reign supreme&amp;quot; (411). Going along with equal rights between the sexes, she defends that &amp;quot;girls should be provided with the same opportunities, intellectually, professionally, socially and economically as boys&amp;quot; (411). If Church believed that only male citizens are valuable members of society, I don&amp;#039;t believe she would be encouraging parents to provide their daughters with the same opportunities. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also found the wording of Church&amp;#039;s essay interesting when she states &amp;quot;women will be taking their &amp;#039;&amp;#039;rightful&amp;#039;&amp;#039; places in society&amp;quot; (411). This almost sounds feminist. It seems like Church is arguing that women have been denied something they were entitled to all along-an equal place with men in all worldly affairs.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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==Nonconformist Joyce Johnson Recounts Her Experience in Obtaining an Illegal Abortion in New York City, 1955==&lt;br /&gt;
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Getting an abortion now seems like it would be a horrible, isolating experience. It is still so controversial that even if a woman makes that decision and is happy with it, she has to face judgment from everyone around her. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Getting an abortion in 1955 seems like it would be so much worse.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Abortion was to be unspoken of and it was really dangerous. In order to find a person to carry out an illegal abortion Joyce Johnson had to ask friends and friends of friends, all of whom probably judged her. She ended up having to meet a shady guy in a restaurant who had some sick obsession with helping girls get abortions. Joyce was truly alone through the entire process. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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To add, The fact that single women would rather face danger and health risks to have an illegal abortion than have a baby shows the amount of pressure that these women were under to fit into a mold. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;To Joyce Johnson, an abortion was living and having a child meant dying. That is a pretty serious statement.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Regardless of one&amp;#039;s moral idea on the subject, I have to say the idea of having a child to many young women today is still the equivalent of dying. If only 1955 had been more acceptable towards the use of contraception, then less women, like Joyce Johnson, would have had to make the decision to stop an unplanned pregnancy. Still, it is disgusting that this decision today, and in 1955, was considered a PUBLIC decision in regards to laws and social acceptability. I still think today that ultra-coservatives would be more willing to forgive a serial rapist and murderer than a woman who made the decision to NOT ruin her life, career, societal standing, education, dreams, ambition, etc., to have an abortion. Based upon unplanned pregnancy levels just because the opportunity to have an abortion is there doesn&amp;#039;t mean that one is going to take advantage of that option. It is a very hard, and very personal decision; Which I think Joyce Johnson did an amazing job conveying. It isn&amp;#039;t fair that a male can have sex unprotected for fun and not have to deal with the same consequences (which the article implied that Joyce Johnson just knew that it was as much of an obligation to the father as it was to her which i would LOVE to have more information upon... was this the thinking of society as a whole at the time? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Was a man financially obligated to take care of the situation? How did that notion change into what it is today?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;)in today&amp;#039;s world even with sexual protection opportunities. Contradictory to her belief on his financial responsibility however I found it interesting that she said &amp;quot;Life was considered sacred. But independence could be punishable by death. The punishment for sex was, appropriately, sexual&amp;quot; (page 419) which is seemingly contradictory to the financial responsibility she felt he had. I totally support her on that statement though. A woman&amp;#039;s right to choose her life ends in this country when a zygote is involved, yet if she were sexually assaulted or raped the legal system would find a way to blame her as the Victim, instead of the male who was just acting naturally. more proof that the punishment for sex is appropriately sexual. I think having an abortion is something that Joyce Johnson thought about roughly, probably lost a ton of sleep over, and I&amp;#039;m happy that she had the opportunity to fly to Puerto Rico to get it done (although, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m also sadly suprised that having a legal abortion at a facility in Puerto Rico would be safer than an illegal one in the United States...??&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;) because if she hadn&amp;#039;t had that opportunity then she would have been stuck with an unloved child and husband, and a disdain for their involvement in her life. Obviously, I feel very strongly in support of Joyce Johnson&amp;#039;s decision to take control of her livelihood, and believe that because of this experience she, and the boy who knocked her up, would in the future both be more careful in regards to sexual activity. It wasn&amp;#039;t a simple solution and from this article I can only imagine the disgust I would feel towards the society who would judge her for such a decision. It&amp;#039;s amazing how morality derived from the teachings of the Catholic Church, in their passage onto the other christian faiths based upon them, play such an unfortunate role historically in the lives of Women in the United States, yet Boys will just be boys. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Ssellers. The U.S. didn&amp;#039;t give her an option. How could the &amp;quot;Land of the Free&amp;quot; criticize one of it&amp;#039;s citizens for taking advantage of an opportunity that the state refused to give?-Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;interesting that the doctor in Canarsie was clearly against abortions, as he didn’t even use the word “abortion” and admonished Johnson, telling her “don’t ever let me catch you back here again, young lady!” (421), yet he still was willing to perform the operation.  Why was that?  Did his concern for women’s safety, the fear that they might turn to someone incompetent, override his opposition to the procedure?  And were most doctors who performed illegal abortions like him, or did they genuinely believe the women had a right to the procedure?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I like Alice found interesting that the doctor described other procedures he performed but would not dare mention abortion. I do not think he really cared about women&amp;#039;s health, I think he was worried that if women came to him who were pregnant and wanted abortions one he would know they were pregnant outside of marriage and two he did not want people (government) to find out he was performing them, at the time I feel like he could of lost his license if it was found out. Maybe he did care about women but with all the precautions he took and the way he spoke to Joyce I have to say I do not think he did, he may of just been a doctor who did not believe in having children outside of marriage. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Regardless of everyone&amp;#039;s outrage at the stigma attached to abortions during most of the twentieth century and up to today, why wouldn&amp;#039;t it have been a public decision? Pushing aside my own feelings towards abortion and trying to stay away from issues of morality or immorality, shouldn&amp;#039;t our society be concerned about demographics? For example, during the early years of the twentieth century in the US and in the pre-WW2 years in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany we saw government incentives for parents to have more children, because (at least in the latter two) they had a national security interest in seeing higher birth rates. Americans at the turn of the century (and arguably still today) were concerned that low birth rates and abortions among upper and middle class whites would lead to &amp;quot;racial suicide.&amp;quot; When people at the time thought in this manner, why wouldn&amp;#039;t abortion become a public decision? It seems that it made sense for that time in history and arguably even today--unless one thinks that we should all go our separate ways and that individual decisions do not affect society as a whole. I think the decision to take a pregnancy to term or abort has drastic consequences (although unforeseen) for society insofar as determining the demographics of that society in years to come. And if the argument that men should provide financially for the women that they impregnate and either assist in expenses or pay for an abortion is ironic in that it perpetuates the idea that women cannot provide for themselves, and is a form of protectionist legislation that we saw in earlier years such as Muller v. Oregon. I feel that as one of the few men in the class I should just come out and state my stance on abortion--I am all for it, especially as a male I feel as though no matter what my personal convictions are as far as morality and life and etc., it&amp;#039;s not my body and it&amp;#039;s not my choice. Personal liberty is important to me, which is why I support the ability of women to have abortion, and also the same reason why I oppose legislation that demands men to take financial responsibility for these matters--it&amp;#039;s a violation of personal liberty. And no, I&amp;#039;m sure that it isn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;fair&amp;quot; that men can &amp;quot;have fun&amp;quot; and not have to deal with the same consequences, but that isn&amp;#039;t something that can be legislated into equality. On a different note, the stigma attached to abortions then and now--it doesn&amp;#039;t just come from oppressive conservative men, but it comes from women as well. Not just the Bible-thumpers, but from young, college-aged liberal-esque women who for all their proclamations of being prochoice, still seem to find ways to label their fellow women who have found some level of sexual liberation and have fun, like men have supposedly been doing for ages, various derogatory terms. An example of this would be all the dirty looks and hushed whispers I&amp;#039;ve seen and heard on this campus from girls directed towards girls who have had abortions. Again, women cannot be socially oppressed by just men, other women take part in it and I want to know why--what do women have to gain by perpetuating certain stigmas and conceptions? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;An Unplanned Pregnancy&amp;quot;, by Joanna Rubin==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article to be &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;fascinating, insightful and harrowing&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. I wonder &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;what audience Joanna Rubin was writing for and after having her abortion at a time when it was illegal, what made her be so willing to share her story.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Were abortions also illegal in Puerto Rico at that time? I know Rubin did not see any other Americans at her clinic, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;was it a likely occurrence that American women would go to Puerto Rico or other countries for the procedure?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; My curiosity was piqued about the beliefs of American doctors after the line, &amp;quot;When I found out I was pregnant, I went to see a doctor, and he told me to come and see him afterwards. I had a low-grade infection. He was very sweet, supportive, gave me antibiotics&amp;quot; (217).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Did American Doctors refer their patients to unofficial clinics that they knew off or simply accept that it was inevitable? As it was illegal, were doctors encouraged to turn in women who got abortions? Were there any actions taken against these women? For me, this article raised a lot more questions about what was typical than it answered.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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To answer one of the questions raised above, I think maybe Joanna Rubin decided to tell her story because she needed to tell people, mainly women, that even though she knew that she wanted an abortion it was still a hard decision to make. She said, &amp;quot;Although I didn&amp;#039;t for a minute think I didn&amp;#039;t want the abortion, it was still a very, very heavy experience. It isn&amp;#039;t &amp;#039;Oh, this is a cool, easy decision to make, and there are no consequences.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;(217) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She wanted to make sure that women knew that abortion wasn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;taking the easy way out,&amp;quot; it was scary, intimidating, and probably created a feeling of guilt which may be another reason for her writing this piece.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also was wondering about the number of women that went to Puerto Rico and other countries to receive abortions during this time. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think when comparing this abortion story of Joanna to the other story of Jocye Johnson, it reveals that pregnancy was a very real and scary thing for women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Both these women made desperate attempts to get an abortion, while still weighing the heavy costs of pain (both physical and emotional), injury,  and possible death. This story, in particular shows the willingness and hardships Joanna faced to get an abortion; it meant she had to leave the country just to do so.  It shows that pregnancy and abortion were real fears for young women, who had little to no access of birth control.  I think that it was included to show that there was a real need for contraceptive information in the 50&amp;#039;s and 60&amp;#039;s and what would lead to the landmark courtcase &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Roe v Wade&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I commend Joanna Rubin for writing her story at a time when abortion was illegal in the United States, I feel that she wanted other women to know that they were not alone. I think that even though Joanna knew she was going to get an abortion no questions asked she knew any woman who gets an abortion would feel a burden on her shoulders. I agree with abratchi this article made me think of Birth Control clinics and how there was a strong need for them not just for married women but any woman who wanted to learn about the risks, symptoms, or who to talk to when they found out they were pregnant. Even today I feel that more women should learn about the risks of pregnancy and how shows on MTV such as 16 and pregnant (while not the high quality) are a reality and show that all it takes is one time and you can be pregnant. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Did women even think about an abortion possibly killing them?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Such as the woman in Margaret Sanger’s Epiphany over Birth Control article who died from a self induced abortion because she couldn’t handle another child. Of course there is always the possibility that child birth could also kill them. Abortion seems a lot more risky though, especially being illegal like it was. Abortion clinics surely couldn’t be regulated and keep safe because there weren’t any governmental policies or standards to be enforced. I would much rather have the child and give it up for an abortion, quietly, than risk dying from a painful abortion that could lead to a deadly infection. That’s just my opinion though; maybe they were too afraid of being pregnant in the first place to think straight and logically. Even though Ms. Rubin thinks that this is a “real clinic” and it “alleviated a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear,” (216) obviously it wasn’t much of facility because she did get “a low-grade infection,” (217). I know that she was in hast to rid herself of being pregnant, but you would think that she would be smarter about her decisions. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She obviously wasn’t going to tell her family, as Rubin describes, “I didn’t have any support from my parents,” (216), possibly because being a sexual women was taboo? Even if that was so, the least they could do was help her or were families that unsupportive of their daughters? I really can’t see a father and, partially, a mother abandoning their child in such a desperate situation.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Morgan above, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I feel pretty much the opposite way about everything she said.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Yes abortion was risky but so was pregnancy and childbirth. This woman was young, unwed, and in school.  If she were to have had the child she would have lost everything in life that she worked so hard for.  She may have been able to have the child quietly and gave it up, but who would have paid for it and where would she have gone? Her parents would have likely shunned her out of their lives, she didn&amp;#039;t have the money, the &amp;quot;father&amp;quot; of the baby didn&amp;#039;t have money. She would have had to take months off of school, and how would she have explained that?  And perhaps she could have gotten an infection from the abortion, but women were not sitting around gabbing about abortions so it&amp;#039;s not like they had first-hand accounts to go off of, just heresay and gossip.  I feel she was not &amp;quot;in hast,&amp;quot; she clearly weighed her options and knew what would have happen if she would have had a baby in her position.  - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Joanna Rubin’s piece “An Unplanned Pregnancy” was touching and interesting. I think that Rubin was attempting to express the fact that there was regret involved but she did what she thought was right. I agree with Christine, here is a young woman who did not love the person that impregnated her, in her first year of Grad school. If she did love him, she “might have kept it” (217) but she didn’t.  Which is a better choice, to live a life with a child and a husband whom you do not love and resent? Or go to any lengths, in this case, Puerto Rico, to have an abortion. She admits that this was a hard decision with consequences.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It also seems that her personal doctor was not completely opposed to her choice “When I found out I was pregnant, I went to see a doctor and he had told me to come and see him afterwards”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (217). He even gave her antibiotics. I was wondering how often doctors helped patients who went to have abortions out of the country or illegally? –Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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i think this piece really shows how alone women felt, and the total isolation that came along with an unwanted pregnancy. Rubin really had no one to turn to except the father of the baby who she did not love. At least today while an abortion is not a gratifying prospect to any woman, it is legal and women aren&amp;#039;t forced to undergo isolating and often unsafe procedures. The fact that her Doctor was understanding afterwards and gave her antibiotics to treat her infection made it seem like while Doctors could not perform the procedures they were sympathetic and did what they could. So while this Doctor was unwilling to perform the procedure, he was willing to be discreet and to treat her for the infection she got obtaining an illegal abortion. Perhaps there was some feeling of guilt behind his actions, I think if I was a Doctor I would feel guilty that I was knowingly turning women away and forcing them to take extreme measures against an unwanted pregnancy. -Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;The Problem That Has No Name,&amp;quot; Betty Friedan, 1963==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think, more than anything, what got to these women was the isolation involved in being the perfect domestic housewife.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; This was an age of single family homes, of cars instead of public transportation, of cleaning quietly in the kitchen rather than enjoying a laugh with the other women over lunch at the defense plant like the women interviewed in the video we watched. These women&amp;#039;s lives revolved around a home that for a significant portion of the day she shared with perhaps a mildly communicative infant or no one at all if her children were old enough to be in school. Sure she went out to do the shopping and interacted with people through that, but she always ultimately returned to her empty house that constantly reminded her of further chores she needed to accomplish. And no matter how many friends women did have, they&amp;#039;d still feel isolated in that they couldn&amp;#039;t share with their friends what was truly on their minds, thinking themselves all alone in their feelings of desperation and boredom. It&amp;#039;s telling that just a simple acknowledgment that friends shared similar thoughts could cause women to break down and cry &amp;quot;just to know they are not alone.&amp;quot; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Mary Ann raised an important point about Betty Freidan’s excerpt, to know that you were not alone in how you felt about your duties as a wife, mother, and the home.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Women were facing societal implications that if you felt that you wanted more or even a career that this meant that you could not be worthy or could not fulfill those duties. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; If you step outside of those roles of the home, does that make you less able to maintain them?  In the 1950’s, you were looked down upon if you did, did it make you less of a mother and wife?  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It became a moral dilemma.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Women had to maintain that ideal picture, they felt the pressure that limited options for self fulfillment for women in those roles.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I play the scene in my mind, the husband saying, “Oh dear, why are you not happy, you have more than any woman could ever want?” (no pressure here.)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Freidan found in talking with other women that she was not alone in her thoughts.  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Women at this time were dealing with such an immense problem. Prior to WWII, they had obtained universal suffrage, and then more independence through the work place while their husbands were in combat. Suddenly, when their husbands returned their extensive independence disappeared as well. Many would would have been scrutinized by their husbands or their peers for complaining about the lifestyle changes they encountered. It is not surprising to see them internalize many of their doubts and fears regarding their complacency or position in society. Over time, it is evident that the problem that women encountered disappeared, and women began to obtain more control of their own lives and leverage in society. Friedan was a pioneer in exploring communication and bonds between women.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this passage very interesting and thought provoking.  Women had a brief glimpse of life in the workplace during World War II, but when the men came home, they again assumed their traditional role as a housewife.  This excerpt mainly revolves around the question: Is this all our lives&amp;#039; will amount to?  Many obviously wanted more than what a housewife provided and some felt almost incomplete doing the monotonous work of daily chores.  However, I think now, especially after doing my interview that this work could not only be difnified but also quite challenging.  The person who I interviewed said her daughter in law is a stay at home mom and she works harder than anybody she knows.  I expect these women to wish for more after many of them had jobs for years, but their work can be just as hard as many respects as what the men are doing. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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== Psychiatrist Marynia F. Farnham and Sociologist Ferdinand Lundberg Denounce the Modern Woman as the &amp;quot;Lost Sex,&amp;quot; 1947 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Oy vey, these women are something, aren’t they? Much like the women of the 19th century who went out into the public to tell women to get back into the house where they belonged, we’ve got a psychiatrist and a sociologist telling women that they shouldn’t have jobs. It just blows the mind. According to them, women who work are neurotic and unfeminine, and they ignore their family duties for their jobs and became resentful towards men. Are they speaking from personal experience, because, you know, they &amp;#039;&amp;#039;have jobs themselves&amp;#039;&amp;#039;? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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The idea of “feminine relinquishment” was interesting.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It seems strange that if you had a career outside of the home, that meant you lost you feminine qualities.  But when there was an ideal perception of family, that locked women in those roles, it made it difficult to go anywhere else without consequences.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I never thought about it as woman were living “dangerously” if women tried to juggle both work and home.  Everyone seems to suffer for the wife’s aspirations.  Who would want to leave the home if they felt they would destroy their family? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think that Farnham and Lundberg were vividly describing the moral dilemmas women were facing if they tried to work and take care of the family.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought these women were quite bold in some of their statements.  I thought that it was interesting how they equated women working outside the home as becoming more masculine, as MHimes above me stated.  They seem to believe that a woman could not possibly be feminine if working outside the home, which caused an internal struggle in women who worked while having household responsibilities, like a husband and children.  They seem to really find danger to a woman&amp;#039;s feminity if she is engaged in work, which in turn negatively affects men.  They appear as advocates of the this new modern cult of domesticity that was emerging in the post war period, it seems. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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At first glance, these writers describe the &amp;quot;Modern Woman&amp;quot; of 1947, as one who appears to have her own destiny within her grasp.  She is now conflicted however, because she has more responsibility; to the home, children, and to work. I found this article interesting because the writers argue the modern woman of their time is now struggling to retain femininity because she is in the &amp;quot;dangerous position of having to live one part of her life on the masculine level, [and] another on the feminine.&amp;quot;(413) Is the need to be equal to men and their accomplishments what caused this rivalry? I never really thought of how damaging the social and psychological barriers were in Post-War War II America. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I understand women proved what they were capable of, but what I am still curious about is how hard was it for women to switch back to dependence of their husbands when they knew they were just as capable in the workforce.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; From the videos we saw in class, I gathered that many women found pride that they could do skilled labor, but this article brings up a good perspective I think. From my interpretation the perspective is that women&amp;#039;s success has to be achieved through a balance of dependence and independence in their role in the household. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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==Taylor, Women Strike for Peace==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I can’t help but chuckle anytime HUAC gets the run around.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Just imagine being in that courtroom. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Middle-class, supposedly meek and compliant little housewives and mothers with their pristine white gloves being accused of Communist activity; even if they did have Communist sympathies, no one would believe it. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;It sounds like these women used the housewife image well in their campaign for peace.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Much like the women of the 19th century reform movement, they justified being involved in politics with their concerns as wives and mothers. And much like the reform women, they embraced and contradicted the ideal image of femininity at the same time. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the WSP to be extremely hypocritical. On one hand Ethel Baron Taylor is complaining about how &amp;quot;women are not in positions of power and they have no role in policy-making&amp;quot; (218) , and on the other she chooses to get her point across by portraying her organization in a way that makes them seem submissive and powerless. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even though she is fighting to obtain more power for women through this group, she inadvertently still relies on men. It particularly disturbed me when she waited for a man to help her out of the police van after being arrested; If Taylor can&amp;#039;t handle a five foot jump without a man guiding her, how are we supposed to take her cause seriously?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I saw WSP as more sly and manipulative.  They knew that the most effective way to get a woman&amp;#039;s voice heard was to play up those female stereotypes, especially in court&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  No judge would throw out a bunch of sweet women who weren&amp;#039;t doing anything wrong!  And they couldn&amp;#039;t go militant or get too forceful with their protests.  That kind of thing tends to irritate and annoy people rather than make them agreeable to the cause.  I just think that if you&amp;#039;re going to go with that method, you can&amp;#039;t complain about being treated like a stereotype afterwards.  So, Taylor complaining about wanting to be treated equally while manipulating the female stereotypes is definitely hypocritical.  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with CBrau. I love the women of the WSP! I found them hilarious and very manipulative. These women obviously knew exactly how to get attention and to use there femininity against political figures to buy for attention. But did these women really think that just because they were women nothing would happen to them? “They’re not going to electrocute me, They’re not going to shoot me,” (218) said Taylor while she was deciding to cross the street or not. Did she think this because she was a woman and surely men wouldn’t hurt her? I guess the stereotypes of that generation weren’t to hurt women, even if they were criminals? They were so outspoken though, even when in the presence of court, “we would present her with a bouquet, and we would applaud,” (220) but they weren’t thrown out of court. I wonder if in the decades before if they were even allowed in court, much less speak out. It appears to me that they were mainly a spectacle looking for attention towards their cause, even if it endangered them. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this piece was charming.  I absolutely love the visual of these women in their pretty little dresses with matching shoes and handbag, white gloves, hats and perfectly coiffed hair being brought in to testify before Congress.  I am no anti-war activist but I think these women had the backbone to petition their government to change the course of history, all before they had to get home and prepare dinner for their families and help their children with their homework.  And they still wanted to be treated as ladies, even while they were being hauled off to jail.  What irony. - EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t necessarily agree with their political opinions, but I&amp;#039;m just saying...their personality would be a good thing to have. Their spunk would continue to entertain people.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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==&amp;quot;Star Struck,&amp;quot; Vicki L. Ruiz ==&lt;br /&gt;
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All these articles are important in our understanding of the past and how it continues to shape the present. However, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found this article in particular to be especially important because generations later the poverty and degradation of Mexican Americans is still the reality. The Mexican American women from the 1920&amp;#039;s to 1950&amp;#039;s written about in this article could easily be Mexican American women today.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  All the issues they faced in the first half of the twentieth century are the same battles they fight today in the beginning of the twenty-first century, with little to no improvement. Perhaps it is because &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;unlike other immigrant groups, the Latina community continues to emigrate and despite having been an essential part of our nation for an extended time, they are perceived to be the “new guys.”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -- Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article could easily be related to today and how women are percieved or told how they should be percieved in the media. While I feel that many immigrant groups wanted to promote their culture, especially the Mexican Americans through language and traditions, the children of immigrant parents wanted to assimilate into American culture, and the leading way in California was through &amp;quot;the public fascination with Hollywood.&amp;quot;(367). Today, things have still not changed infact I believe we as a society have become more fascinated with Hollywood and how it defines America, I cannot even count how many times I have heard the story about Sandra Bullock and her husband and very little on world affairs or even the healthcare bill. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Being from Southern California, I can definately relate to this article and many of the points that are made here are definately still relevant today, many years later.  Many still live in poverty and are often treated as second class citizens.  There are tons of farming fields in the area, and you can generally only see mexicans out there picking.  It&amp;#039;s not that they choose this lifestyle, just that they are somehow relegated to do it.  One interesting thing the article mentions is that there was no gradual immersion language program and it was just &amp;quot;sink or swim in an English-only environment&amp;quot; (365).  I beleive this still holds true today, although it is somewhat better.  I knew some who hardly spoke english and were just thrown into an english-speaking environment, and this incredibly difficult to adapt.  Another interesting point is that being &amp;quot;Spanish&amp;quot; had a somewhat positive connotation whereas being &amp;quot;Mexican&amp;quot; was a negative connotation.  They speak the same language yet being from Mexico somehow makes you worse than being from Spain.  The thing that stands out to me the most is that people then and even now seem to have a pre-conceived notion that mexicans are inherently lower class than Americans, but they are people, just like we are. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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==Indian Relocation, Wilma Mankiller==&lt;br /&gt;
The hardships that Indians peoples faced throughout the 19th and 20th century had clear impacts.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This experience by one Indian girl who was forced to leave her town in Oklahoma for California was heartbreaking.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  This girl had to endure leaving her entire life, at the expense of the US Government who thought they were offering “a wonderful opportunity for Indian families to get great jobs, obtain good educations for their kids and, once and for all, leave poverty behind” (212).  This girls life did not get easier, but harder, emotionally and financially.  It is a clear example of how racial minorities were again, uprooted from their lives.  Wilma explains how she was teased because of her last name and how she knew she was clearly different from the other children, who knew as well.  This must have had lasting impacts on her as she grew and matured. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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The history of Native Americans deserves just as much credit as African Americans or Women&amp;#039;s history. This story of Indian relocation is just one of the many very sad experiences of what  United States policy has put them through.  The sadist part of it all is that they were here first! This particular story shows that even in the 1950s the US was still relocating 60,000 Indians thinking we had the right to &amp;quot;mainstream &amp;quot; them into Urban areas. After reading this depressing story it make me feel extremely grateful that Native Americans are no longer treated in this way and made me realize if anyone in the USA should be the most proud to be American, it should be all the Native Americans left today that still retain their cultures. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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Just as with the Japanese internment camps during World War II, I feel like the US government was good at alienating various racial/ethnic groups in America. The Indians had already been forcibly removed once (The Trail of Tears) but to do it again is just horrible. The fact that the government changed it mind all of a sudden was both disturbing to the American Indian way of life, but also scarred them emotionally and in many other ways, which is similar to what abratchi said above. What is most awful is how the Mankiller family had so much trouble adapting.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; How could the government just take the Indians from their old way of life and drop them into bustling urban/industrial cities, where they have no idea what to do, how to act, and are seen as aliens to the country, even though they were Americans.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It was sad to read about how the girls were made fun of at school, and as a result they &amp;quot;sat up late every night reading aloud to each other to get rid of our accents.&amp;quot; (P. 214). These girls were so ashamed of their ancestry, which was even sadder. Why was it so necessary to assimilate different cultures into American culture? Why couldn&amp;#039;t white Americans just simply coexist with minority groups and accept one another for their differences instead of displacing them physically as well as emotionally? Wilma Mankiller used the word &amp;quot;alienation&amp;quot; which I think is a perfect word to describe this situation. These Indians were alienated from their homes, culture and just life in general and the worst part of all of it was that this relocation didn&amp;#039;t help the government in any way. So in the end, both the government and the Indians lost. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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This line really caught my attention:  &amp;quot;He (Wilma&amp;#039;s father) must have honestly believed that in a distant city he could provide a better life for his children, with all the modern amenities&amp;quot; (p. 212).  Interesting, considering Wilma and her family were very poor and I&amp;#039;m assuming isolated from modern civilization at Mankiller Flats.  So how did Wilma&amp;#039;s father know about modern civilization and the chances it offered?  From talking to the BIA?  From going to Boarding School?  From working?  Or perhaps it really was their poverty that convinced him they needed to move and try for a new life (despite the risks and separation from home).  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting how she almost plays off the decision to move to California as her parents decisions that they made without the force of governmental pressure. Yes there were no weapons forcing them to move or marching them down a path they did not want to take, but the propaganda for leaving (the promise of a better life, the false advertisements of wealth and opportunity) would have been enough to get any group of people to leave their homelands, especially if they had been used to poverty for an extended period of time. The American government does not have the best track record when it comes to handling relations with other ethnicities and races in terms of making equal opportunities available. Ghettos turned ethnic enclaves seem to be a recurring theme in American minority history, and each minority group has had an impact on the development of the America that exists today, therefore each group does deserve to have recognition, not just the African Americans and women, but the Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps, the chicano Americans who were limited in their migration but who were instrumental in making the US a transcontinental commerce, and finally the Native Americans, who suffered every time white Americans wanted to move and take their land. No group should be excluded in American history and none should be excluded in how they are remembered and honored today. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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==A Letter to the Editor of &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Ladder&amp;#039;&amp;#039; from an African American Lesbian, 1957==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The issue of appearance and whether or not minority groups should dress according to the standards of “the dominant social group” was interesting here.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Conforming to their standards might be a way for a lesbian (or an African American or any other minority group) to prove that she was “normal” and that her sexuality should not be a determining factor of her standing in society.  On the other hand, not conforming to these standards would be a way to say “I don’t care what you think.”  The writer seems to think it shouldn’t matter either way, as she expresses  the hope that “someday…the ‘discreet’ Lesbian will not turn her head on the streets at the sight of the ‘butch’ strolling hand in hand with her friend in their trousers and definitive haircuts” (422).  It’s something modern lesbians could identify with, as there are many women for whom appearance is still a big concern, as they do not want the stereotype of the “manly” lesbian to be the only thing others think of.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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The Letter to the editor of The Ladder was very interesting.  I agree with Alice on many points. I was also intrigued by her account of the struggle that women faced in general, whether they were homosexual or not. She explains “Women, like other oppressed groups of one kind or another, have particularly had to pay a price for the intellectual impoverishment that the second class status imposed on us for centuries” (421). It must have been comforting for lesbian women to have these publications out there.  As  MP explained in the preface to the chapter, The Ladder was the first American lesbian publication. Upon further research, I found that The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States and was edited by Phyllis Lyon, co founder of Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian organization. As the writer of the letter noted, this publication was “a fine elementary step in a rewarding direction” (421). It seems like a publication such as The Ladder was a step forward in bringing the lesbian community together while portraying a positive image of lesbian women to the public, something that was beyond taboo at the time. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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==African American Pauli Murray Explains Why Negro Girls Stay Single, 1947==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this piece a mix of saddening, isolating, and devastating. I felt like there was no hope at all for the African American woman in any aspect of life, especially in finding love. She could aspire to better herself and get an education, but wouldn’t be able to find a job that would pay her equal to white women. She could look for a husband and she wouldn’t find one. This must have been the harshest reality to find; that African American just were not available and, those that were, did not want to marry her type of a woman. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She “often has a potential earning power far beyond the range of the majority of available singe males-a social handicap if she wants marriage,” (416).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; A &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;man’s partner making more than him must have been emasculating.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Men did not want to be subordinate to women in any way or in any race, as history has shown us; he always wanted to be the breadwinner for the family. “He is the victim of constant frustration in his role as a male because socially he is subordinate to the white women although he is trained to act as a member of the dominate sex,” (417). African American men were already seen as of lesser value than white women, and yet to be dominate in their own race. How could they be dominate while they were lesser in society than white women, less educated than African American women, and brought home less money to support their families? Because African American men were so emotionally broken by their place in the hierarchy of society as well as their role as African American men, women had no chance to find a strong male partner. Without such a partner or the potential to find one, I would feel isolated in society too. -Morgan M&lt;br /&gt;
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This reminded me so much of this wonderful non-fiction piece called &amp;quot;The Ghetto Girls&amp;#039; Guide to Dating and Romance&amp;quot; by Sonja Livingston. Check it out. ANYWAYS  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also heard echoes of the &amp;quot;double burden&amp;quot; idea of being both black and a woman:  &amp;quot;the Negro woman finds herself at the bottom of the economic and social scale.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I imagine that Murray&amp;#039;s article was pretty darn controversial at the time--she talks unabashedly about the failings of black men, throwing her lot in with ostracized women who have spoken out with similar opinions. She makes a bold call to arms, and I&amp;#039;d be interested to know how that was taken. I&amp;#039;d imagine there was a lot of hate mail involved. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_10_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 10 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_10_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-03-25T12:48:41Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Women in the Armed Forces, Marion Stegeman */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Rosie the Riveter, Fanny Christina Hill ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Having grown up accustomed to seeing Rosie the Riveter in any history of the United States in World War II, it&amp;#039;s almost surprising to have a tangible and relatable &amp;quot;Rosie&amp;quot; to read about. I really enjoy the comparison between the work woman who presents herself through Rosie than the working woman who came before her, who had to constantly fight for her right to work. It&amp;#039;s amazing how when the country needed the woman worker she was there even though society had always told her it was not her place. I think it&amp;#039;d be interesting to read more accounts of woman workers during this time. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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What surprised me most about Fanny Christina Hill was the number of opportunities that she had as a black woman thanks to WWII. When she describes her life she talks about several jobs that she had. Those that she didn’t like, she would quit. Its amazing to think that only a few decades prior, black woman were limited to hard domestic work and they were stuck doing those jobs because they had no other options. Hill had many options, she went to work at North American Aircraft where she learned to do different skills. She did not like department 17 because it “was nothing but shooting and bucking rivets.” (186) So she decided to leave, then got a job in bench work, then plastics. Then she had a child and left North American and did day work, but she did not like that so she quit. Then she got a factory job weaving. Then, North American Aircraft called her back so she quit the factory job and went back! This shows how WWII’s labor shortage truly opened up opportunities for black woman. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Fanny Christina Hill’s experiences were extraordinary opportunities as a black woman.  She was able to make more money than she had before the War.  Though she talks about how the jobs were different than white females working in the same company, she expressed that it was movement forward and how her hard work earned her a place back in the company after she had her child.  I thought of Hill, after having discussed unemployment being not present during that time, explains a reason why she had a lot of opportunities.   -Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the story about Fanny Christina Hill&amp;#039;s experiences. I think she really brought Rosie the Riveter to life. I&amp;#039;m glad that during the war even African American women were able to obtain jobs. They didn&amp;#039;t, however, always get the best jobs available as opposed to their white, female counterparts. She said the job she got was in Department 17 where all they did was shooting and bucking rivets even if they had their good education. This is also a happy story though because she was able to return to the job she loved at the end.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with everyone else about having a real, tangible Rosie the Riveter. I have J. Howard Miller&amp;#039;s poster on my wall at home and have often wondered who the encouraging woman was, where she came from, what she did after the war... and now I know!&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; While reading though, I was intrigued by Fanny Christina Hill&amp;#039;s off hand comment of &amp;quot;they weren&amp;#039;t hiring too many men unless they had a good excuse&amp;quot; (186). I know this is a women&amp;#039;s history class, but it made me wonder. Were they refusing to hire men that they thought should have been fighting in the War?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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Putting it into context and the time period, its not that surprising there were more opportunities for black women during the war, there was more opportunities for everybody.  As with all the sources we read, having an individual story, a tangible person does make things seem more real, more personal, more easily relateable. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I appreciated this piece because it provided insight into the life of a working African American woman. While in class, we discuss the concept of black women being forced to work in order to provide for their family, but this in particular allows us to see what it was really like. One thing i noticed throughout Hill&amp;#039;s piece was the lack of nationalism in her tone. In many history classes, teachers comment on the enthusiastic nationalism that many women expressed in their jobs. Many saw it as a &amp;quot;calling&amp;quot; to help their nation and support their troops. Hill seems to be concerned with working for a living. Was this a common trend? --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. Norma Yerger Queen Reports on the Problems of Employed Mothers in Utah, 1944==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Those who quit have done so because of lack of good care for their children or of inability to do the housework and the job&amp;quot; (page 373). I like that quote from the article a lot because it emphasizes to me the difficultly some women must have had with working instead of fulfilling their obligation as wives and mothers. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In today&amp;#039;s understanding, it is possible to do both at the same time (although, not everyone would agree with that statement), and so it&amp;#039;s easy to be sympathetic toward these women who had to deal with the status of society around them changing on an almost daily notion, while internally debating upon leaving the home to do a civic or familal duty or fulfilling her role in life as caretaker and mother.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems as though&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; the author of this article is sort of addressing two separate issues. As the title says, the first is the issue of providing families with adequate childcare services. The second problem though is that working mothers are still expected to shoulder all of the housework plus the added chores brought about by wartime rationing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The author would rather women be given the option of shorter work weeks so that they can complete their tasks at home than receive help from husbands who return from work to read newspapers and relax. She seems very accepting of the fact that joint housekeeping simply &amp;quot;didn&amp;#039;t click&amp;quot; for her and her husband, despite the fact that she had gone to work under the impression that he would help out more around the house. Couldn&amp;#039;t someone have made the case that if women were doing their patriotic duty by going to work in the war industries that men could do theirs as well by helping with some of the housework that might otherwise keep their wives home? -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the problem that Mr.s Norma Yerger Queen has is that while women were expected to give more to the war effort, since men&amp;#039;s duty was going to war, the ones who were left at home were not expected to contribute as much.  I think it brings up a question of who should fill the jobs that men left behind.  The wives of the young men who went off to fight would most likely be the ones with small children, which would make it difficult to work.  Also, as brought up in this piece, there were plenty of women who had to takeover farms with the absence of men.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Overall I think the idea of women working during the war is not as simple as it sounds&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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==Wartime Migration, Harriette Arnow==&lt;br /&gt;
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Gertie and her family relocate because of World War II&amp;#039;s new economic opportunities, but Gertie does not shed her Depression era mentality very quickly. Her husband seems content in his ability to borrow to put a roof over his family&amp;#039;s heads. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Gertie, however, remains ever mindful of the family budget. She was most likely the one keeping track of the finances during the Depression, especially while her husband was off working in Detroit, and his casual attitude towards buying on credit and debt do not sit well with her. After all of our readings from last week, it&amp;#039;s not hard to imagine some of the extremes Gertie may have gone to to keep her kids fed.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; We know that, at the least, she sacrificed time with her children as she writes that &amp;quot;she&amp;#039;d never had the time&amp;quot; to take the kids on day trips the way Clovis had. Yet now, in her eyes at least, her husband is undoing all of her careful scrimping and saving. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s easy to see how real-life women in Gertie&amp;#039;s situation would have felt a bit taken advantage of and lost amidst the changing economic environment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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When I read the excerpt from Harriet Arnow’s, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Doll maker&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, I kept thinking of how different Gertie and Clovis were about the idea of  what they wanted their life to be like.  I don’t think they believed in the idea of a companionate marriage.  Gertie’s hatred toward the city brings out the harshness of what a city was like and compared it to the farm she’d always wanted.  As I read her descriptions of the city, about loud noises and the small living space, it made me think of the shock women would have felt as they moved from rural areas to a bustling city for better wages.    -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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This poor woman, Gertie, and her family really got to me even though it’s just a book. Whether the book was told in the third person omniscient or first person, I really felt like I was Gertie while reading this. The fact that she was forced from her home by her husband, so he could get a job that paid better, was enough to sympathize with her. What really got me was the sense of confinement I felt while reading. Beginning with Gertie standing “her outspread hands pressed against the door, closed behind her,” (192). I felt like she was holding onto the door for her dear life, as if she was in a bad dream and she was going to wake up in any minute. She continues “to stand a moment longer staring, choking, swallowing hard to prove to herself that she was not choking,” (193). It feels to me like she’s drowning, struggling for a way out of her new life that her husband has forced upon her; an unavoidable wave crashed on her. Gertie obviously couldn’t leave her husband and the support he provided as well as separating her children from their father even if she isn’t happy. Her husband, Clovis, contributed to Gertie’s drowning feeling not just by making the family move but in his accumulation of debt as well. Gertie asks “if’n you’ve already run into debt ‘fore me an th youngens comes, why how can you manage with us?” (195). I would have asked the same question. What was he thinking gathering debt before the rest of his family had already moved in? Now Gertie had more reason to feel like she was drowning. There was no way out and that much have been a devastating, overwhelming feeling. I can’t even imagine.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Gertie isn’t just mentally trapped, she’s physically trapped. The house is so small that she “struck her shin bone against a chair,” (193) and then “her hips struck a corner of the low head of a cot-like bed,” (193). The house itself feels like a jail cell.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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World War II created many more opportunities for employment, and these were very important after the economic tragadies of the great depression.  This family moved to Detroit due to the country&amp;#039;s massive mobilization and hopefully a job.  I think their experience there was nothing like they expected.  They thought they would be able to work constantly and improve their economic status.  But as the excerpt says, the conditions were not ideal and it was not always easy to find consistent work.  Their life is portrayed as incredibly rudamentary and boring.  The conditions do not seem ideal as, their was &amp;quot;adoorless doorway into a small hall-like living room.&amp;quot;  I think this family had very high expectations and that the War would provide un-limited jobs and solve all their problems but this was not the case and they often struggled to make a living.  Poverty was still prevalent in American life, especially for this particular family. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what Mary Ann said. As the wife, Gertie was placed in charge of dealing with all the important matters of the family. The passage says, &amp;quot;Clovis had always brought the fun - trips in the coal truck, the river in summer, grape hunting in the fall.&amp;quot; (P. 194) She seemed to take the on the role of the responsible parent, and almost seemed to be the head of the household in more ways than others. She was the one who worried about the finances, how being in debt was going to affect the family, and taking care of the family in general. Her husband was so distracted by the big city, and how different Detroit was from their old home. He saw everything in shades of gold, being so caught up in the idea of a new job. However,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Gertie, was not so blinded by this and realized maybe they might have been worse off moving for her husband&amp;#039;s job.  I think many women faced what Gertie faced. Gertie moved because her husband found better work because of the War. That was a positive side of all this, except that Gertie&amp;#039;s life was drastically changed by the move.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I feel that many women moved along with their husbands to find better work, but it was hard for them to adjust to the new life. It seemed to me that Gertie had culture shock after moving to Detroit. I can only imagine her reaction to when her husband said, &amp;quot;When else would a woman on th three-tu-twelve shift git home?&amp;quot; (Page 197). Many women probably had to adjust to the new lifestyle, but these new lifestyles were necessary for individuals as well as the nation as a whole. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think this story provided a good contrast to the readings that talk about all of the success people found because of the war. The war did improve the lives of many people, and following the war was there was unprecedented wealth, but there were also people who didn’t find success and continued in the same poor conditions they always had. Though this reading is part of a fictional novel, I think it provides a balance for all of the improvements in Americans lives that we’ve read about.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think this story was a good inclusion, because I personally have not heard much about wartime migration and like Taylor was saying it is a good contrast to all the women who benefited from the war despite the circumstances. In many ways these story seemed like something that could have been written about an early 20th century family. I was surprised by the power the husband exerted over his wife and her desire to appease him. Gertie is a contrast to some of the other women we read about who seemed much more independent. I wonder what there lifestyle was in Kentucky that her husband Clovis was so anxious to leave it to pursue opportunities in Detroit, because more than once Gertie compares her Detroit apartment to her Kentucky home and finds it lacking.--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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==The Challenges of Maintaining the Health, Discipline, and Morale of the Women&amp;#039;s Army Corps in North Africa and the Mediterranean During World War II==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that the colonel who declared that the women of the Fifth Army Corps were &amp;quot;perhaps the best-integrated unit in the theater&amp;quot; (pg. 375) was on to something. It&amp;#039;s noted throughout the article that these women complained little while enduring difficult and occasionally dangerous conditions. In fact, they seemed to thrive on their work. I think it was probably because the women were so integrated that they thrived, because they felt useful, that their job had a real and defined purpose. They had responsibility and jobs that they were good at and being praised for. With all of that, it doesn&amp;#039;t seem so surprising that the women did not want to be moved to &amp;quot;less exhausting&amp;quot; positions. It was not an ideal job to be sure, yet most of these women probably believed themselves to be on an adventure of a lifetime. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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While these women were successful in being the first WAC women to travel to Italy and North Africa, the standards that they were selected from, I found a bit outrageous.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; “WAC advisers recommended that any such groups, for best success, be carefully selected,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (375). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The fact that certain types of women were unwanted while others seems very odd coming from a women’s organization, you would think that they would be accepting of all types of women (of course ‘all types of women’ being white upper/middle class). “Those with irritating habits and mannerisms,” (376) weren’t chosen because they were too much to handle and, I think, would take away emphasis on the men of the Army.  “The ambitious or the highly qualified women,” (376) weren’t a good choice either because they may want something that they couldn’t ever have, a promotion. Those women chosen for this job, of following the Fifth Army around, were essentially passive, pushovers.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I may be generalizing too much and I’m sure some of the women may have been more, but from what I understand, to be one of the first WAC women needed in combat they had to be submissive, average, and boring. I suppose some women who behave do make history. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m not sure that I would call them submissive or passive at all. These women were carefully selected for unusual military situations the same way men were selected then and both sexes are selected nowadays.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Character flaws may not be such a big deal in the regular infantry or a typical steno pool, but under stressful conditions &amp;quot;irritating habits&amp;quot; can severely damage the morale of the entire unit. For such an elite unit, grouchy or talkative MEN would not be chosen, nor would overqualified men OR women (not just because they can&amp;#039;t be promoted, but more because the unit has to work together and every member has to carry out orders given by authority to make the unit run smoothly. If one member thinks they are better than the rest--has had more training or a higher IQ or anything--that causes unrest in the unit, which is the last thing you need on the front lines, which is where these women were). It seems to me that men would be held to these same standards when selecting an elite unit. Self-reliance, the ability to handle stress, and the ability to work well with others--these are not specific to females. These courageous and ground-breaking women challenged perceptions of both the soldiers and their commanding officers, and I&amp;#039;m sure the public reading about them on the home front. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Japanese Relocation, Monica Sone==&lt;br /&gt;
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I felt for these Japanese-American people.  There was no reason for them to be placed into camps and contained like they were. Somehow they found hope though, in little things. The dandelions seemed to be the most influential piece of hope. The Mother was who found hope in the dandelions saying, “They’re the only beautiful things around here. We could have a garden right here,” (199) and I found it really upsetting when Henry tore up the dandelions. That could be interpreted as a metaphor for Japanese people themselves, they were the only thing that was left beautiful where they had come from and had been uprooted up in hope becoming someone better through the camps? Much like the Jewish people were being captured by Hitler at the same time perhaps? -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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This was a terrible time in American History.  We terribly took advantage of these Japanese people who did nothing wrong and placed them in camps simply because they were related to other Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor.  The most shocking part was that they were all American citizens and had been loyal citizens, and were still placed into different internment camps.  This family is now #10710, which is tragic to think that the government just thought of them as objects and not even as citizens of the U.S.  In continuing with Morgan&amp;#039;s mention of the beautiful dandelions, it is tragic that they could find so much joy in something as simple as a flower.  These people were ripped from their homes and very few things can bring them joy and to think that dandelions can do that is very sad.  The government treated the Japanese terribly in these camps and the barracks were in terrible shape, the food was terrible, and they did not deserve to be ripped away from their homes. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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For Morgan&amp;#039;s comment above, I think the feelings of Jews in Europe and the Japanese in America during this time were very similar. It should be acknowledged that Hitler&amp;#039;s concentration camps were designed for the extermination of a set of people, while the internment camps were a (very undemocratic) wartime precaution in the aftermath for Pearl Harbor. Both groups of people were alienated because of their heritage, forcibly moved, imprisoned and had to live through horrendous conditions. I do not think America&amp;#039;s internment camps are identical to the concentration camps of the Holocaust, few events will ever compare. However, the fear, the anger and the confusion would have been felt by both the Jews and the Japanese. I have learned about World War II numerous times in my life, and I feel like the experience of the internment camp is not emphasized enough. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that this piece reflects how the war affected people, especially women of all ethnicities.  Like all the others have stated, this was a terrible time for the Japenese people, being ripped from their homes only to be relocated to a prison-type setting.  I think this experience by this Japenese family shows how the war transformed the lives of all people living in America. It believe it is also important to note how the young girl felt that she was no one, how this process made her feel like she was not an American, although she was born in the US and her parents had lived in the country for 25 years.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with all of the above statements but I feel even more strongly about the internment camps. While I agree with what kokeefe said that the internment camps were different from concentration camps, how Americans de-humanized the Japanese was similar. Japanese-Americans became a number much like a test rat in a labratory, they were organized by numbers and letters and were not allowed outside of the high fences, much like a cage. They had poor shelter, food, and were watched everyday including giving the Japanese a bedtime of 10:00, and thinking it was okay. I think there should be a museum representing the stories and lives of the Japanese who were forced into these internment camps much like the Holocaust museum so more Americans can understand what we did as a nation in World War II. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I remember learning about Japanese internment camps when i was young being just totally confused by it.  In part, because it did seem eerily similar to what had been going on in Nazi Germany, as many others had mentioned.  This passage really brings out a lot of the degradation that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;i imagine many Japanese-Americans must have felt to have been controlled and suspected and discriminated against because of what was for many, including the author of this piece, a relatively distant ancestry.  She&amp;#039;d grown up being an &amp;quot;American&amp;quot;, and now she was alienated from that identity without really being able to identify with the &amp;quot;Japanese&amp;quot; for which she was interned.  I think that the author&amp;#039;s discussion of the issei and nisei sort of gets at that struggle to pin down an identity and differences between generational reactions.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Erin B&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it says a lot about the meaning of Japanese internment camps to the Japanese who were in them when Monica Sone says, &amp;quot;Maybe I wasn&amp;#039;t considered an American anymore.&amp;quot; (Page 201) Just that mere sentence probably sums up the thoughts of the Japanese Americans at the time. Many of the Japanese were not immigrants but were born in America, making them citizens. Besides the fact that the government&amp;#039;s decision to use internment camps resembled the Nazi labor/concentration camps, the government was more or less imprisoning its own citizens. What happened to all the rights American citizens had? They just simply overlooked. Was there nobody in the government who thought that this was wrong in so many ways? I understand the American fear because of the war and because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but Germany was a watching enemy at the time also, but German-American citizens weren&amp;#039;t sent to internment camps. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The internment camps just seem inconsistent with what America stood for.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I thought it was interesting how Monica Sone talked about the &amp;quot;wire fence.&amp;quot; She says, &amp;quot;Of one thing I was sure. The wire fence was real. I no longer had the right to walk out of it. It was also because some people had little faith in the ideas and ideals of democracy.&amp;quot; (p. 201). I think it was extremely sad that at this point in time, Monica and other Japanese/Japanese Americans were not proud to be Americans or be in America, and to be honest, I don&amp;#039;t blame them one bit. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading this, and already knowing of the internment camps, it just shows the the good ole US of A isn&amp;#039;t always as cracked up as it&amp;#039;s supposed to be.  America makes laws and does thing that can be just as horrendous as the next guy (Hello Chinese Exclusion Acts). This wasn&amp;#039;t the first time they had issues with our Asian neighbors across the Pacific. Yes the Japanese did bomb Pearl Harbor, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean every single Japanese should be sent away.  If Americans received the same treatment somewhere else in the world, mirroring what we did to the Japanese, it just wouldn&amp;#039;t fly. As Alex said, I completely understand the not being proud to be American bit.  Ummm hello they just locked you away and took all of your rights from you!!- Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this piece to be fairly hard to read because this was definitely not a highlight in American history. Sometimes I think that japanese internment gets over looked and pushed under the carpet, but the notion of labeling a family (who had been an active and participating member of American society, sometimes for more than one generation) as a number and forcing them to move from their homes and into something barely better than horse stables, is not something that Americans associate with WWII. Many times the US is looked at as a protector of freedom and responsible for helping bring down the Nazi regime and ending the Holocost, and even though internment camps wer far from death camps, the idea of separating one ethnicity or nationality from the rest of society and keeping them in a fenced in, cramped area, was present in America. Fear makes people do crazy scary things. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women of Wartime Los Alamos, Ruth Marshak==&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece was particularly interesting.  I think that Ruth Marshak gives insight into the life of women who felt the effects of the war on the homefront in a very different way than most women.  She explains how she was relocated to New Mexico, which she initially thought was not a great place to live, but in the end, it was a positive experience for her.  I think she reveals how the war really separated men and women during this time. Although Ruth&amp;#039;s husband was not away at war, he was still involved in the war effort and she knew very little, if anything about his line of work.  All she knew was that she had to pick up her life and move to a remote, secret location. She even comments how &amp;quot;The Tech Area was a great pit which swallowed our scientist husbands out of sight, almost out of our lives.&amp;quot; (205)  I think this is important because it shows how women, like herself, had to learn to adapt to a life without a [constant] husband. She is an example of a woman who was able to make the best of a wartime situation that she and many other women, did not prefer. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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Ruth Marshak seems like an optimistic person who overcame the obstacles in her life without fuss (but plenty of worrying).  I liked that she stood by her husband and instead of focusing on the secrets between them too much, she focused on housework, baking cakes (well, avoiding them, really), socializing with other wives and various recreational activities.  I am wondering how her experience compares to other wive&amp;#039;s whose husbands were deployed overseas and fighting on the warfront.  I agree that her life was far from easy since she had to move to a new home, separate herself from her family, and remain clueless when it came to the &amp;quot;secret project.&amp;quot;  And yet, she lived in a beautiful place, her husband was working safely within the U.S. (although, perhaps she worried over his safety since she was unsure of his work), and they even seemed to enjoy recreational activities together (at least she hints at this when she talks about the physicists being able to partake in such activities despite long work hours).  Perhaps not the easiest life, but I don&amp;#039;t know if I want to compare her to someone who has a husband overseas. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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Marshak appears to be a very strong individual. Though her scenario was different than most women, it still required a great deal of strength. In reading this, I think that her position could be applied to those wives who were married to men in power. In many of those cases his work life needed to be separate from his personal life and even his marriage. In another sense, I think that Marshak&amp;#039;s situation can be related to women married to service members. Her husband was so close, yet so far. Because he could not talk about many things, it was as if her were deployed or separated from her. This emotional strain would take a toll day after day.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Marshak&amp;#039;s description of their isolation was very interesting. According to her, the fence surrounding Los Alamos was became an very symbolic structure and &amp;quot;a tangible barrier&amp;quot; which separated the peoples &amp;#039; lives from the rest of the world. It also sounds like women&amp;#039;s  lives in this secrecy must of been extremely difficult and the fact they just trusted their husbands is a very admirable thing.  On a different tangent, I am glad they did have some fun while they were there, &amp;quot;skiing and horseback riding, mountain climbing and folk dancing, and gay parties which lasted till dawn&amp;quot; (204). --David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women in the Armed Forces, Marion Stegeman==&lt;br /&gt;
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Could Marion be a representation of a “New Woman” for the forties?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  She is exuberantly adventurous in her letters, thrilling in flying and performing aerobatic stunts.  Her use of phrases such as “smackers and much love” and “I sacheted over to Major McConnell’s office” displays quite a bit of sassiness.  She also holds an appeal to the male aviators, and fully uses that to her advantage and has fun with it.  There is also an independent streak in her, as it is clear she doesn’t like being told what to do, and so doesn’t want to get stuck doing clerical work.  However, she still follows the expected path for a woman of her generation: she marries and focuses on raising her children.  – Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I could not be more proud of a woman in the war effort than a woman like Marion Stegeman. As Alice noted I think she was a &amp;quot;new woman&amp;quot; and wore it as a badge on display for everyone to see what she was capable of. I think she strongly differed from typical women of the time and previous wars because she did not romanticize war and when she wrote to her mother she described dangers and death; no she did not see death overseas but could see it on bases and felt the pain of losing a comrade. I found interesting how she compared the death of her classmates and instructor in a plane and to get used to hearing about such incidents to, &amp;quot;fall[ing] down in the bathtubs at home and be killed, or get in a car and meet death.&amp;quot; (MAW, 191). Marion&amp;#039;s letters home were truly powerful and made me wonder if other WASPS or WAAC&amp;#039;s wrote their parents or significant others the same sort of letters, describing the freedoms they felt and also the feeling of loss? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Marion Stegeman is really having a field day with her war-time piloting experience.  Her story about getting blown off-course is hilarious.  As has already been mentioned, the language she uses in these letters is extremely 1940&amp;#039;s colorful and seems care-free - which was totally cloying at first to read - which made her last letter seem somewhat sad, as she sounds rather deflated and is obviously fishing for reassurance that she&amp;#039;s doing the right thing.  The experience of having so much freedom as a pilot along with the constant patriotism-fueled encouragement must have been exhilarating for a lot of women, and work of any kind - particularly if you get to fly - must have been a good distraction from the reality of war.  -Erin B&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this section, especially the language that Marion used (&amp;quot;smackers&amp;quot; made my day and I may have to use that at some point). I found it interesting that once she felt that she &amp;quot;had&amp;quot; to do something or report to someone in contrast to being a pilot for her own enjoyment, she made the decsion that she wanted to get married. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Wouldn&amp;#039;t she have to report to her husband at that point? I feel as if she was care-free and almost living in her own personal world&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, and was out to find personal enjoyment rather than work, which was a different way of looking at things than the previous excerts that we have read. Most of the women that we have read are looking for work for extra spending money (or survival money during the Depression) and if they enjoy it then its a bonus, whereas Marion is looking for enjoyment first. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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This was an especially interesting article for me to read. Last year, I attended the United States Naval Academy as a midshipman, with the intent to complete my four years of undergraduate work and be commissioned as an officer. Needless to say, this essay struck a personal note with me. It was interesting to see how roles, perceptions, and outlooks of women in the milita ry have changed over the past 60-70 years. All of the women seem very optimistic and determined, a trait that has not left many females in the military today. There is some hint of discrimination or unhappiness present, though not as much as I expected. These women seem to be concerned with the thrill of being able to participate. And still many of the other issues discussed are still relevant in today&amp;#039;s world.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was really refreshing to read Marion seemed extremely intelligent and grounded. I thought it was amazing how she kept expressing that her sacrifice wasn&amp;#039;t comparable to those men were making (although I&amp;#039;m sure her mother disregarded this and thought her daughter extremely brave) I was also impressed with her positive attitude I didn&amp;#039;t observe any bitterness at the end when she discussed how the airforce would not have room for her after the war except in a secretarial capacity, of course she was buoyed by the excitement of her new romance. She even went further to say that she owes the army so much. She seemed genuinely grateful that she got the experience she did regardless of how short the duration was.-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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==Photos taken during WWII by Esther Bubley==&lt;br /&gt;
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First, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I want to say that I found the photos to be really helpful&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Not only can I understand the history of women during WWII but I can see them, I think this makes a big difference in fully understanding the time. Next, I want to say that what stood out to me was the different ways that women were dressed. All of these pictures were taken during the war, however, some women were wearing typical woman&amp;#039;s clothing of the time, while other women were wearing pants. What is more interesting is that women in the skirts all seemed to sit in a really uncomfortable, uptight looking way with their legs crossed at the bottom or held tightly together with their hands in their laps. The women in pants, on the other hand, are sitting in traditionally male positions as we would see them today, slouched with legs wide open, leaning on the thighs. I&amp;#039;m not sure if that means anything, but it stood out to me. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed looking at these photographs, Esther Bubley truly captured “average Americans” just as she intended to.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The image that struck me the most was the Instructor of the Capital Transit Company.  The title from the website describes exactly what I was thinking: “Bending gender roles for ‘the duration’”.  This is the image that was painted in class on Tuesday when we were talking about women working outside the home in “men’s” positions.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I wonder how the men behind the instructor felt when they were being taught by a woman. They look about 40 in the photo so it must have been quite a transition for them. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I wonder how the men who stayed behind during the war felt in general, I know that this is a Women’s History course but WWII was a turning point for women in the work place, and I wonder how much, if any, resistance they were met with from the men who had stayed behind. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Just a thought. – Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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Interesting that the War Department and women in general made it very clear that they were filling these jobs &amp;quot;for the duration,&amp;quot; implying from the beginning that they not only understood that they were to relinquish their jobs upon the return of American GIs but accepted that as a given. Also, I wonder how much of a turning point WW2 was for women in the workplace, especially in light of the popular image of the 1950s household--the stay at home mom who cooks/cleans etc, more or less the picture of domesticity. If WW2 was such a turning point for women in the workplace then why was there such a move for women to remain at home in the 1950s, not only as perpetuated by media but also in the expectations of lower and middle class families? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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So neat! Sometimes it&amp;#039;s hard to imagine how things were in just general situations back then, but these photographs give us great, real pictures! My favorites were the one with the soldiers waiting for the service bus, and there&amp;#039;s a woman standing there in uniform among the. She just looked like she belonged, and it was really cool to see that. I also like the one with the men and women laughing on the bus together... it&amp;#039;s a photo of great emotion, and I think the women&amp;#039;s joy is telling. I do wish that we had more complete captions, or even little essays that explained what exactly was going on and how Esther Bubley was seeing it, or what she wanted us to notice in the photo.   --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Mary McLeod Bethune Urges President Roosevelt to Turn to Qualified Negro Women for Help, 1940==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article to be really interesting because it shows that black women felt the need to help their country just as much as the white women did. The reason it is so interesting to me is because up until this time, the country had not done much for the black community, so why should they feel like they need to be helping their country? The answer to that question is sort of what Bethune is getting at. She is saying that the black community has earned the right to be patriotic and defensive of their country because they &amp;#039;&amp;#039;are&amp;#039;&amp;#039; citizens. She wants to be treated like the white citizens who are defending their country because she is a hardworking citizen too. On page 372, she says while speaking about the black community, &amp;quot;they, too, have earned the right to be numbered among the active forces who are working towards the protection of our democratic stronghold.&amp;quot; I think that Mary Bethune wants the President to know that black women love their country and want to protect it, and they should be given the right to do so.  - Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Angie. It also seems that McLeod is reminding the President that unity in America is paramount when fighting against religious and racial hatred overseas.  On a secondary note, I am not sure how pertinent this is but I found it interesting that McLeod addresses the African American community as his. “…the Negro, as a minority group in this nation, express anew his faith in your leadership and his unswerving adherence …” (371). I just find it interesting that a woman who is writing about black women fighting for their country would address her community in a masculine form.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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Mary McLeod Bethune--&amp;quot;prominent black educator, civil rights activist, and director of the Negro Division of the National Youth Administration.&amp;quot; What did this black woman who obviously held much status in both black and white communities mean when she urged FDR to &amp;quot;make such use of the services of QUALIFIED Negro women...&amp;quot;? What made a black woman qualified in the eyes of Bethune? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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==Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, A Schoolgirl at Manzanar, 1940s==&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought reading this article was really kind of sad because of how much Jeanne didn&amp;#039;t seem to want anything to do with her Japanese culture. I don&amp;#039;t think it was really a conscious decision on her part, its just that she was American and wanted to do American things. She didn&amp;#039;t want to learn the traditional Japanese form of dance but instead wanted to do baton twirling and go to catechism. Furthermore, it was pretty obvious that she didn&amp;#039;t care whether or not she found a Japanese husband or not. Jeanne and probably many other girls just like her really were not foreign at all. Jeanne didn&amp;#039;t even speak Japanese. Americans at this time were terrified of anyone of that race and threw them all into the same category whether they belonged or not. This is a perfect example of someone who didn&amp;#039;t belong. Women were already fighting hard for more equality and these girls had it even harder because, just like African Americans, they didn&amp;#039;t have gender OR race on their side. - Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I’ve always thought that Japanese American internment/relocation camps were probably the worst decision FDR ever made in office. A lot of the people put into camps had lived in America for many years, and their children had never been to Japan in their lives. They were Americans, and some of them, as in the case of Jeanne, were very much disconnected from Japanese culture. Jeanne didn’t speak Japanese, and she twirled batons and wanted to be a Catholic. How much far removed from Japan could you get?&lt;br /&gt;
The Sone reading mentioned that “some people had little faith in the ideas and ideals of democracy” so they put Japanese Americans in camps to ensure loyalty. But it wasn’t Japanese Americans that didn’t have faith in democracy, it was the people who put them into camps. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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There has to be some sort of great irony in that Houston&amp;#039;s great disappointment in her father&amp;#039;s objection to her baptism was that she would never be a &amp;quot;white-gowned princess.&amp;quot; I wonder how the continued work of evangelical white Christians in the communities of minorities compared to the efforts of those schools set up for Native American children as seen in previous readings. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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== Wartime Workers (photo) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Oddly enough, I didn&amp;#039;t even notice that these women were wearing pants until I read it in the caption.  And then I thought it was interesting that they were actually allowed to wear them.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Of course pants are the most appropriate clothing for factory and industry work, but I wonder who realized this fact and gave women permission to wear pants in factories.  How did women feel about wearing men&amp;#039;s clothing while working?  Also, after reading Fanny Hill&amp;#039;s account, did these women enjoy their jobs as much as Fanny apparently did?  They certainly don&amp;#039;t look miserable, but then again they could be posing for the picture. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the pants, along the fact that all of the women have their hair up, may represent a man&amp;#039;s job.  If they women were wearing something more feminine it could imply that the job could or should be done by a woman.  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the women look pretty happy wearing pants in this picture, probably not because of the pants, but because they were in man pants doing what men did. To me this picture shows how World War II really united the country and created a strong sense of nationalism, where the opportunity for women doing men&amp;#039;s work was accepted. -- David Fitch&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_10_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 10 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_10_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-03-25T12:38:37Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Wartime Migration, Harriette Arnow */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Rosie the Riveter, Fanny Christina Hill ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Having grown up accustomed to seeing Rosie the Riveter in any history of the United States in World War II, it&amp;#039;s almost surprising to have a tangible and relatable &amp;quot;Rosie&amp;quot; to read about. I really enjoy the comparison between the work woman who presents herself through Rosie than the working woman who came before her, who had to constantly fight for her right to work. It&amp;#039;s amazing how when the country needed the woman worker she was there even though society had always told her it was not her place. I think it&amp;#039;d be interesting to read more accounts of woman workers during this time. -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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What surprised me most about Fanny Christina Hill was the number of opportunities that she had as a black woman thanks to WWII. When she describes her life she talks about several jobs that she had. Those that she didn’t like, she would quit. Its amazing to think that only a few decades prior, black woman were limited to hard domestic work and they were stuck doing those jobs because they had no other options. Hill had many options, she went to work at North American Aircraft where she learned to do different skills. She did not like department 17 because it “was nothing but shooting and bucking rivets.” (186) So she decided to leave, then got a job in bench work, then plastics. Then she had a child and left North American and did day work, but she did not like that so she quit. Then she got a factory job weaving. Then, North American Aircraft called her back so she quit the factory job and went back! This shows how WWII’s labor shortage truly opened up opportunities for black woman. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Fanny Christina Hill’s experiences were extraordinary opportunities as a black woman.  She was able to make more money than she had before the War.  Though she talks about how the jobs were different than white females working in the same company, she expressed that it was movement forward and how her hard work earned her a place back in the company after she had her child.  I thought of Hill, after having discussed unemployment being not present during that time, explains a reason why she had a lot of opportunities.   -Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the story about Fanny Christina Hill&amp;#039;s experiences. I think she really brought Rosie the Riveter to life. I&amp;#039;m glad that during the war even African American women were able to obtain jobs. They didn&amp;#039;t, however, always get the best jobs available as opposed to their white, female counterparts. She said the job she got was in Department 17 where all they did was shooting and bucking rivets even if they had their good education. This is also a happy story though because she was able to return to the job she loved at the end.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with everyone else about having a real, tangible Rosie the Riveter. I have J. Howard Miller&amp;#039;s poster on my wall at home and have often wondered who the encouraging woman was, where she came from, what she did after the war... and now I know!&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; While reading though, I was intrigued by Fanny Christina Hill&amp;#039;s off hand comment of &amp;quot;they weren&amp;#039;t hiring too many men unless they had a good excuse&amp;quot; (186). I know this is a women&amp;#039;s history class, but it made me wonder. Were they refusing to hire men that they thought should have been fighting in the War?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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Putting it into context and the time period, its not that surprising there were more opportunities for black women during the war, there was more opportunities for everybody.  As with all the sources we read, having an individual story, a tangible person does make things seem more real, more personal, more easily relateable. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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I appreciated this piece because it provided insight into the life of a working African American woman. While in class, we discuss the concept of black women being forced to work in order to provide for their family, but this in particular allows us to see what it was really like. One thing i noticed throughout Hill&amp;#039;s piece was the lack of nationalism in her tone. In many history classes, teachers comment on the enthusiastic nationalism that many women expressed in their jobs. Many saw it as a &amp;quot;calling&amp;quot; to help their nation and support their troops. Hill seems to be concerned with working for a living. Was this a common trend? --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. Norma Yerger Queen Reports on the Problems of Employed Mothers in Utah, 1944==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Those who quit have done so because of lack of good care for their children or of inability to do the housework and the job&amp;quot; (page 373). I like that quote from the article a lot because it emphasizes to me the difficultly some women must have had with working instead of fulfilling their obligation as wives and mothers. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In today&amp;#039;s understanding, it is possible to do both at the same time (although, not everyone would agree with that statement), and so it&amp;#039;s easy to be sympathetic toward these women who had to deal with the status of society around them changing on an almost daily notion, while internally debating upon leaving the home to do a civic or familal duty or fulfilling her role in life as caretaker and mother.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems as though&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; the author of this article is sort of addressing two separate issues. As the title says, the first is the issue of providing families with adequate childcare services. The second problem though is that working mothers are still expected to shoulder all of the housework plus the added chores brought about by wartime rationing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The author would rather women be given the option of shorter work weeks so that they can complete their tasks at home than receive help from husbands who return from work to read newspapers and relax. She seems very accepting of the fact that joint housekeeping simply &amp;quot;didn&amp;#039;t click&amp;quot; for her and her husband, despite the fact that she had gone to work under the impression that he would help out more around the house. Couldn&amp;#039;t someone have made the case that if women were doing their patriotic duty by going to work in the war industries that men could do theirs as well by helping with some of the housework that might otherwise keep their wives home? -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the problem that Mr.s Norma Yerger Queen has is that while women were expected to give more to the war effort, since men&amp;#039;s duty was going to war, the ones who were left at home were not expected to contribute as much.  I think it brings up a question of who should fill the jobs that men left behind.  The wives of the young men who went off to fight would most likely be the ones with small children, which would make it difficult to work.  Also, as brought up in this piece, there were plenty of women who had to takeover farms with the absence of men.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Overall I think the idea of women working during the war is not as simple as it sounds&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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==Wartime Migration, Harriette Arnow==&lt;br /&gt;
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Gertie and her family relocate because of World War II&amp;#039;s new economic opportunities, but Gertie does not shed her Depression era mentality very quickly. Her husband seems content in his ability to borrow to put a roof over his family&amp;#039;s heads. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Gertie, however, remains ever mindful of the family budget. She was most likely the one keeping track of the finances during the Depression, especially while her husband was off working in Detroit, and his casual attitude towards buying on credit and debt do not sit well with her. After all of our readings from last week, it&amp;#039;s not hard to imagine some of the extremes Gertie may have gone to to keep her kids fed.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; We know that, at the least, she sacrificed time with her children as she writes that &amp;quot;she&amp;#039;d never had the time&amp;quot; to take the kids on day trips the way Clovis had. Yet now, in her eyes at least, her husband is undoing all of her careful scrimping and saving. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s easy to see how real-life women in Gertie&amp;#039;s situation would have felt a bit taken advantage of and lost amidst the changing economic environment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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When I read the excerpt from Harriet Arnow’s, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Doll maker&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, I kept thinking of how different Gertie and Clovis were about the idea of  what they wanted their life to be like.  I don’t think they believed in the idea of a companionate marriage.  Gertie’s hatred toward the city brings out the harshness of what a city was like and compared it to the farm she’d always wanted.  As I read her descriptions of the city, about loud noises and the small living space, it made me think of the shock women would have felt as they moved from rural areas to a bustling city for better wages.    -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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This poor woman, Gertie, and her family really got to me even though it’s just a book. Whether the book was told in the third person omniscient or first person, I really felt like I was Gertie while reading this. The fact that she was forced from her home by her husband, so he could get a job that paid better, was enough to sympathize with her. What really got me was the sense of confinement I felt while reading. Beginning with Gertie standing “her outspread hands pressed against the door, closed behind her,” (192). I felt like she was holding onto the door for her dear life, as if she was in a bad dream and she was going to wake up in any minute. She continues “to stand a moment longer staring, choking, swallowing hard to prove to herself that she was not choking,” (193). It feels to me like she’s drowning, struggling for a way out of her new life that her husband has forced upon her; an unavoidable wave crashed on her. Gertie obviously couldn’t leave her husband and the support he provided as well as separating her children from their father even if she isn’t happy. Her husband, Clovis, contributed to Gertie’s drowning feeling not just by making the family move but in his accumulation of debt as well. Gertie asks “if’n you’ve already run into debt ‘fore me an th youngens comes, why how can you manage with us?” (195). I would have asked the same question. What was he thinking gathering debt before the rest of his family had already moved in? Now Gertie had more reason to feel like she was drowning. There was no way out and that much have been a devastating, overwhelming feeling. I can’t even imagine.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Gertie isn’t just mentally trapped, she’s physically trapped. The house is so small that she “struck her shin bone against a chair,” (193) and then “her hips struck a corner of the low head of a cot-like bed,” (193). The house itself feels like a jail cell.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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World War II created many more opportunities for employment, and these were very important after the economic tragadies of the great depression.  This family moved to Detroit due to the country&amp;#039;s massive mobilization and hopefully a job.  I think their experience there was nothing like they expected.  They thought they would be able to work constantly and improve their economic status.  But as the excerpt says, the conditions were not ideal and it was not always easy to find consistent work.  Their life is portrayed as incredibly rudamentary and boring.  The conditions do not seem ideal as, their was &amp;quot;adoorless doorway into a small hall-like living room.&amp;quot;  I think this family had very high expectations and that the War would provide un-limited jobs and solve all their problems but this was not the case and they often struggled to make a living.  Poverty was still prevalent in American life, especially for this particular family. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what Mary Ann said. As the wife, Gertie was placed in charge of dealing with all the important matters of the family. The passage says, &amp;quot;Clovis had always brought the fun - trips in the coal truck, the river in summer, grape hunting in the fall.&amp;quot; (P. 194) She seemed to take the on the role of the responsible parent, and almost seemed to be the head of the household in more ways than others. She was the one who worried about the finances, how being in debt was going to affect the family, and taking care of the family in general. Her husband was so distracted by the big city, and how different Detroit was from their old home. He saw everything in shades of gold, being so caught up in the idea of a new job. However,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Gertie, was not so blinded by this and realized maybe they might have been worse off moving for her husband&amp;#039;s job.  I think many women faced what Gertie faced. Gertie moved because her husband found better work because of the War. That was a positive side of all this, except that Gertie&amp;#039;s life was drastically changed by the move.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I feel that many women moved along with their husbands to find better work, but it was hard for them to adjust to the new life. It seemed to me that Gertie had culture shock after moving to Detroit. I can only imagine her reaction to when her husband said, &amp;quot;When else would a woman on th three-tu-twelve shift git home?&amp;quot; (Page 197). Many women probably had to adjust to the new lifestyle, but these new lifestyles were necessary for individuals as well as the nation as a whole. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think this story provided a good contrast to the readings that talk about all of the success people found because of the war. The war did improve the lives of many people, and following the war was there was unprecedented wealth, but there were also people who didn’t find success and continued in the same poor conditions they always had. Though this reading is part of a fictional novel, I think it provides a balance for all of the improvements in Americans lives that we’ve read about.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think this story was a good inclusion, because I personally have not heard much about wartime migration and like Taylor was saying it is a good contrast to all the women who benefited from the war despite the circumstances. In many ways these story seemed like something that could have been written about an early 20th century family. I was surprised by the power the husband exerted over his wife and her desire to appease him. Gertie is a contrast to some of the other women we read about who seemed much more independent. I wonder what there lifestyle was in Kentucky that her husband Clovis was so anxious to leave it to pursue opportunities in Detroit, because more than once Gertie compares her Detroit apartment to her Kentucky home and finds it lacking.--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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==The Challenges of Maintaining the Health, Discipline, and Morale of the Women&amp;#039;s Army Corps in North Africa and the Mediterranean During World War II==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that the colonel who declared that the women of the Fifth Army Corps were &amp;quot;perhaps the best-integrated unit in the theater&amp;quot; (pg. 375) was on to something. It&amp;#039;s noted throughout the article that these women complained little while enduring difficult and occasionally dangerous conditions. In fact, they seemed to thrive on their work. I think it was probably because the women were so integrated that they thrived, because they felt useful, that their job had a real and defined purpose. They had responsibility and jobs that they were good at and being praised for. With all of that, it doesn&amp;#039;t seem so surprising that the women did not want to be moved to &amp;quot;less exhausting&amp;quot; positions. It was not an ideal job to be sure, yet most of these women probably believed themselves to be on an adventure of a lifetime. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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While these women were successful in being the first WAC women to travel to Italy and North Africa, the standards that they were selected from, I found a bit outrageous.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; “WAC advisers recommended that any such groups, for best success, be carefully selected,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (375). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The fact that certain types of women were unwanted while others seems very odd coming from a women’s organization, you would think that they would be accepting of all types of women (of course ‘all types of women’ being white upper/middle class). “Those with irritating habits and mannerisms,” (376) weren’t chosen because they were too much to handle and, I think, would take away emphasis on the men of the Army.  “The ambitious or the highly qualified women,” (376) weren’t a good choice either because they may want something that they couldn’t ever have, a promotion. Those women chosen for this job, of following the Fifth Army around, were essentially passive, pushovers.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I may be generalizing too much and I’m sure some of the women may have been more, but from what I understand, to be one of the first WAC women needed in combat they had to be submissive, average, and boring. I suppose some women who behave do make history. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m not sure that I would call them submissive or passive at all. These women were carefully selected for unusual military situations the same way men were selected then and both sexes are selected nowadays.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Character flaws may not be such a big deal in the regular infantry or a typical steno pool, but under stressful conditions &amp;quot;irritating habits&amp;quot; can severely damage the morale of the entire unit. For such an elite unit, grouchy or talkative MEN would not be chosen, nor would overqualified men OR women (not just because they can&amp;#039;t be promoted, but more because the unit has to work together and every member has to carry out orders given by authority to make the unit run smoothly. If one member thinks they are better than the rest--has had more training or a higher IQ or anything--that causes unrest in the unit, which is the last thing you need on the front lines, which is where these women were). It seems to me that men would be held to these same standards when selecting an elite unit. Self-reliance, the ability to handle stress, and the ability to work well with others--these are not specific to females. These courageous and ground-breaking women challenged perceptions of both the soldiers and their commanding officers, and I&amp;#039;m sure the public reading about them on the home front. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Japanese Relocation, Monica Sone==&lt;br /&gt;
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I felt for these Japanese-American people.  There was no reason for them to be placed into camps and contained like they were. Somehow they found hope though, in little things. The dandelions seemed to be the most influential piece of hope. The Mother was who found hope in the dandelions saying, “They’re the only beautiful things around here. We could have a garden right here,” (199) and I found it really upsetting when Henry tore up the dandelions. That could be interpreted as a metaphor for Japanese people themselves, they were the only thing that was left beautiful where they had come from and had been uprooted up in hope becoming someone better through the camps? Much like the Jewish people were being captured by Hitler at the same time perhaps? -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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This was a terrible time in American History.  We terribly took advantage of these Japanese people who did nothing wrong and placed them in camps simply because they were related to other Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor.  The most shocking part was that they were all American citizens and had been loyal citizens, and were still placed into different internment camps.  This family is now #10710, which is tragic to think that the government just thought of them as objects and not even as citizens of the U.S.  In continuing with Morgan&amp;#039;s mention of the beautiful dandelions, it is tragic that they could find so much joy in something as simple as a flower.  These people were ripped from their homes and very few things can bring them joy and to think that dandelions can do that is very sad.  The government treated the Japanese terribly in these camps and the barracks were in terrible shape, the food was terrible, and they did not deserve to be ripped away from their homes. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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For Morgan&amp;#039;s comment above, I think the feelings of Jews in Europe and the Japanese in America during this time were very similar. It should be acknowledged that Hitler&amp;#039;s concentration camps were designed for the extermination of a set of people, while the internment camps were a (very undemocratic) wartime precaution in the aftermath for Pearl Harbor. Both groups of people were alienated because of their heritage, forcibly moved, imprisoned and had to live through horrendous conditions. I do not think America&amp;#039;s internment camps are identical to the concentration camps of the Holocaust, few events will ever compare. However, the fear, the anger and the confusion would have been felt by both the Jews and the Japanese. I have learned about World War II numerous times in my life, and I feel like the experience of the internment camp is not emphasized enough. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that this piece reflects how the war affected people, especially women of all ethnicities.  Like all the others have stated, this was a terrible time for the Japenese people, being ripped from their homes only to be relocated to a prison-type setting.  I think this experience by this Japenese family shows how the war transformed the lives of all people living in America. It believe it is also important to note how the young girl felt that she was no one, how this process made her feel like she was not an American, although she was born in the US and her parents had lived in the country for 25 years.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with all of the above statements but I feel even more strongly about the internment camps. While I agree with what kokeefe said that the internment camps were different from concentration camps, how Americans de-humanized the Japanese was similar. Japanese-Americans became a number much like a test rat in a labratory, they were organized by numbers and letters and were not allowed outside of the high fences, much like a cage. They had poor shelter, food, and were watched everyday including giving the Japanese a bedtime of 10:00, and thinking it was okay. I think there should be a museum representing the stories and lives of the Japanese who were forced into these internment camps much like the Holocaust museum so more Americans can understand what we did as a nation in World War II. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I remember learning about Japanese internment camps when i was young being just totally confused by it.  In part, because it did seem eerily similar to what had been going on in Nazi Germany, as many others had mentioned.  This passage really brings out a lot of the degradation that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;i imagine many Japanese-Americans must have felt to have been controlled and suspected and discriminated against because of what was for many, including the author of this piece, a relatively distant ancestry.  She&amp;#039;d grown up being an &amp;quot;American&amp;quot;, and now she was alienated from that identity without really being able to identify with the &amp;quot;Japanese&amp;quot; for which she was interned.  I think that the author&amp;#039;s discussion of the issei and nisei sort of gets at that struggle to pin down an identity and differences between generational reactions.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Erin B&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it says a lot about the meaning of Japanese internment camps to the Japanese who were in them when Monica Sone says, &amp;quot;Maybe I wasn&amp;#039;t considered an American anymore.&amp;quot; (Page 201) Just that mere sentence probably sums up the thoughts of the Japanese Americans at the time. Many of the Japanese were not immigrants but were born in America, making them citizens. Besides the fact that the government&amp;#039;s decision to use internment camps resembled the Nazi labor/concentration camps, the government was more or less imprisoning its own citizens. What happened to all the rights American citizens had? They just simply overlooked. Was there nobody in the government who thought that this was wrong in so many ways? I understand the American fear because of the war and because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but Germany was a watching enemy at the time also, but German-American citizens weren&amp;#039;t sent to internment camps. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The internment camps just seem inconsistent with what America stood for.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I thought it was interesting how Monica Sone talked about the &amp;quot;wire fence.&amp;quot; She says, &amp;quot;Of one thing I was sure. The wire fence was real. I no longer had the right to walk out of it. It was also because some people had little faith in the ideas and ideals of democracy.&amp;quot; (p. 201). I think it was extremely sad that at this point in time, Monica and other Japanese/Japanese Americans were not proud to be Americans or be in America, and to be honest, I don&amp;#039;t blame them one bit. -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading this, and already knowing of the internment camps, it just shows the the good ole US of A isn&amp;#039;t always as cracked up as it&amp;#039;s supposed to be.  America makes laws and does thing that can be just as horrendous as the next guy (Hello Chinese Exclusion Acts). This wasn&amp;#039;t the first time they had issues with our Asian neighbors across the Pacific. Yes the Japanese did bomb Pearl Harbor, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean every single Japanese should be sent away.  If Americans received the same treatment somewhere else in the world, mirroring what we did to the Japanese, it just wouldn&amp;#039;t fly. As Alex said, I completely understand the not being proud to be American bit.  Ummm hello they just locked you away and took all of your rights from you!!- Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this piece to be fairly hard to read because this was definitely not a highlight in American history. Sometimes I think that japanese internment gets over looked and pushed under the carpet, but the notion of labeling a family (who had been an active and participating member of American society, sometimes for more than one generation) as a number and forcing them to move from their homes and into something barely better than horse stables, is not something that Americans associate with WWII. Many times the US is looked at as a protector of freedom and responsible for helping bring down the Nazi regime and ending the Holocost, and even though internment camps wer far from death camps, the idea of separating one ethnicity or nationality from the rest of society and keeping them in a fenced in, cramped area, was present in America. Fear makes people do crazy scary things. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women of Wartime Los Alamos, Ruth Marshak==&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece was particularly interesting.  I think that Ruth Marshak gives insight into the life of women who felt the effects of the war on the homefront in a very different way than most women.  She explains how she was relocated to New Mexico, which she initially thought was not a great place to live, but in the end, it was a positive experience for her.  I think she reveals how the war really separated men and women during this time. Although Ruth&amp;#039;s husband was not away at war, he was still involved in the war effort and she knew very little, if anything about his line of work.  All she knew was that she had to pick up her life and move to a remote, secret location. She even comments how &amp;quot;The Tech Area was a great pit which swallowed our scientist husbands out of sight, almost out of our lives.&amp;quot; (205)  I think this is important because it shows how women, like herself, had to learn to adapt to a life without a [constant] husband. She is an example of a woman who was able to make the best of a wartime situation that she and many other women, did not prefer. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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Ruth Marshak seems like an optimistic person who overcame the obstacles in her life without fuss (but plenty of worrying).  I liked that she stood by her husband and instead of focusing on the secrets between them too much, she focused on housework, baking cakes (well, avoiding them, really), socializing with other wives and various recreational activities.  I am wondering how her experience compares to other wive&amp;#039;s whose husbands were deployed overseas and fighting on the warfront.  I agree that her life was far from easy since she had to move to a new home, separate herself from her family, and remain clueless when it came to the &amp;quot;secret project.&amp;quot;  And yet, she lived in a beautiful place, her husband was working safely within the U.S. (although, perhaps she worried over his safety since she was unsure of his work), and they even seemed to enjoy recreational activities together (at least she hints at this when she talks about the physicists being able to partake in such activities despite long work hours).  Perhaps not the easiest life, but I don&amp;#039;t know if I want to compare her to someone who has a husband overseas. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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Marshak appears to be a very strong individual. Though her scenario was different than most women, it still required a great deal of strength. In reading this, I think that her position could be applied to those wives who were married to men in power. In many of those cases his work life needed to be separate from his personal life and even his marriage. In another sense, I think that Marshak&amp;#039;s situation can be related to women married to service members. Her husband was so close, yet so far. Because he could not talk about many things, it was as if her were deployed or separated from her. This emotional strain would take a toll day after day.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Marshak&amp;#039;s description of their isolation was very interesting. According to her, the fence surrounding Los Alamos was became an very symbolic structure and &amp;quot;a tangible barrier&amp;quot; which separated the peoples &amp;#039; lives from the rest of the world. It also sounds like women&amp;#039;s  lives in this secrecy must of been extremely difficult and the fact they just trusted their husbands is a very admirable thing.  On a different tangent, I am glad they did have some fun while they were there, &amp;quot;skiing and horseback riding, mountain climbing and folk dancing, and gay parties which lasted till dawn&amp;quot; (204). --David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women in the Armed Forces, Marion Stegeman==&lt;br /&gt;
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Could Marion be a representation of a “New Woman” for the forties?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  She is exuberantly adventurous in her letters, thrilling in flying and performing aerobatic stunts.  Her use of phrases such as “smackers and much love” and “I sacheted over to Major McConnell’s office” displays quite a bit of sassiness.  She also holds an appeal to the male aviators, and fully uses that to her advantage and has fun with it.  There is also an independent streak in her, as it is clear she doesn’t like being told what to do, and so doesn’t want to get stuck doing clerical work.  However, she still follows the expected path for a woman of her generation: she marries and focuses on raising her children.  – Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I could not be more proud of a woman in the war effort than a woman like Marion Stegeman. As Alice noted I think she was a &amp;quot;new woman&amp;quot; and wore it as a badge on display for everyone to see what she was capable of. I think she strongly differed from typical women of the time and previous wars because she did not romanticize war and when she wrote to her mother she described dangers and death; no she did not see death overseas but could see it on bases and felt the pain of losing a comrade. I found interesting how she compared the death of her classmates and instructor in a plane and to get used to hearing about such incidents to, &amp;quot;fall[ing] down in the bathtubs at home and be killed, or get in a car and meet death.&amp;quot; (MAW, 191). Marion&amp;#039;s letters home were truly powerful and made me wonder if other WASPS or WAAC&amp;#039;s wrote their parents or significant others the same sort of letters, describing the freedoms they felt and also the feeling of loss? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Marion Stegeman is really having a field day with her war-time piloting experience.  Her story about getting blown off-course is hilarious.  As has already been mentioned, the language she uses in these letters is extremely 1940&amp;#039;s colorful and seems care-free - which was totally cloying at first to read - which made her last letter seem somewhat sad, as she sounds rather deflated and is obviously fishing for reassurance that she&amp;#039;s doing the right thing.  The experience of having so much freedom as a pilot along with the constant patriotism-fueled encouragement must have been exhilarating for a lot of women, and work of any kind - particularly if you get to fly - must have been a good distraction from the reality of war.  -Erin B&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this section, especially the language that Marion used (&amp;quot;smackers&amp;quot; made my day and I may have to use that at some point). I found it interesting that once she felt that she &amp;quot;had&amp;quot; to do something or report to someone in contrast to being a pilot for her own enjoyment, she made the decsion that she wanted to get married. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Wouldn&amp;#039;t she have to report to her husband at that point? I feel as if she was care-free and almost living in her own personal world&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, and was out to find personal enjoyment rather than work, which was a different way of looking at things than the previous excerts that we have read. Most of the women that we have read are looking for work for extra spending money (or survival money during the Depression) and if they enjoy it then its a bonus, whereas Marion is looking for enjoyment first. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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This was an especially interesting article for me to read. Last year, I attended the United States Naval Academy as a midshipman, with the intent to complete my four years of undergraduate work and be commissioned as an officer. Needless to say, this essay struck a personal note with me. It was interesting to see how roles, perceptions, and outlooks of women in the military have changed over the past 60-70 years. All of the women seem very optimistic and determined, a trait that has not left many females in the military today. There is some hint of discrimination or unhappiness present, though not as much as I expected. These women seem to be concerned with the thrill of being able to participate. And still many of the other issues discussed are still relevant in today&amp;#039;s world.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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==Photos taken during WWII by Esther Bubley==&lt;br /&gt;
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First, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I want to say that I found the photos to be really helpful&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Not only can I understand the history of women during WWII but I can see them, I think this makes a big difference in fully understanding the time. Next, I want to say that what stood out to me was the different ways that women were dressed. All of these pictures were taken during the war, however, some women were wearing typical woman&amp;#039;s clothing of the time, while other women were wearing pants. What is more interesting is that women in the skirts all seemed to sit in a really uncomfortable, uptight looking way with their legs crossed at the bottom or held tightly together with their hands in their laps. The women in pants, on the other hand, are sitting in traditionally male positions as we would see them today, slouched with legs wide open, leaning on the thighs. I&amp;#039;m not sure if that means anything, but it stood out to me. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed looking at these photographs, Esther Bubley truly captured “average Americans” just as she intended to.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The image that struck me the most was the Instructor of the Capital Transit Company.  The title from the website describes exactly what I was thinking: “Bending gender roles for ‘the duration’”.  This is the image that was painted in class on Tuesday when we were talking about women working outside the home in “men’s” positions.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I wonder how the men behind the instructor felt when they were being taught by a woman. They look about 40 in the photo so it must have been quite a transition for them. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I wonder how the men who stayed behind during the war felt in general, I know that this is a Women’s History course but WWII was a turning point for women in the work place, and I wonder how much, if any, resistance they were met with from the men who had stayed behind. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Just a thought. – Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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Interesting that the War Department and women in general made it very clear that they were filling these jobs &amp;quot;for the duration,&amp;quot; implying from the beginning that they not only understood that they were to relinquish their jobs upon the return of American GIs but accepted that as a given. Also, I wonder how much of a turning point WW2 was for women in the workplace, especially in light of the popular image of the 1950s household--the stay at home mom who cooks/cleans etc, more or less the picture of domesticity. If WW2 was such a turning point for women in the workplace then why was there such a move for women to remain at home in the 1950s, not only as perpetuated by media but also in the expectations of lower and middle class families? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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So neat! Sometimes it&amp;#039;s hard to imagine how things were in just general situations back then, but these photographs give us great, real pictures! My favorites were the one with the soldiers waiting for the service bus, and there&amp;#039;s a woman standing there in uniform among the. She just looked like she belonged, and it was really cool to see that. I also like the one with the men and women laughing on the bus together... it&amp;#039;s a photo of great emotion, and I think the women&amp;#039;s joy is telling. I do wish that we had more complete captions, or even little essays that explained what exactly was going on and how Esther Bubley was seeing it, or what she wanted us to notice in the photo.   --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Mary McLeod Bethune Urges President Roosevelt to Turn to Qualified Negro Women for Help, 1940==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article to be really interesting because it shows that black women felt the need to help their country just as much as the white women did. The reason it is so interesting to me is because up until this time, the country had not done much for the black community, so why should they feel like they need to be helping their country? The answer to that question is sort of what Bethune is getting at. She is saying that the black community has earned the right to be patriotic and defensive of their country because they &amp;#039;&amp;#039;are&amp;#039;&amp;#039; citizens. She wants to be treated like the white citizens who are defending their country because she is a hardworking citizen too. On page 372, she says while speaking about the black community, &amp;quot;they, too, have earned the right to be numbered among the active forces who are working towards the protection of our democratic stronghold.&amp;quot; I think that Mary Bethune wants the President to know that black women love their country and want to protect it, and they should be given the right to do so.  - Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Angie. It also seems that McLeod is reminding the President that unity in America is paramount when fighting against religious and racial hatred overseas.  On a secondary note, I am not sure how pertinent this is but I found it interesting that McLeod addresses the African American community as his. “…the Negro, as a minority group in this nation, express anew his faith in your leadership and his unswerving adherence …” (371). I just find it interesting that a woman who is writing about black women fighting for their country would address her community in a masculine form.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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Mary McLeod Bethune--&amp;quot;prominent black educator, civil rights activist, and director of the Negro Division of the National Youth Administration.&amp;quot; What did this black woman who obviously held much status in both black and white communities mean when she urged FDR to &amp;quot;make such use of the services of QUALIFIED Negro women...&amp;quot;? What made a black woman qualified in the eyes of Bethune? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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==Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, A Schoolgirl at Manzanar, 1940s==&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought reading this article was really kind of sad because of how much Jeanne didn&amp;#039;t seem to want anything to do with her Japanese culture. I don&amp;#039;t think it was really a conscious decision on her part, its just that she was American and wanted to do American things. She didn&amp;#039;t want to learn the traditional Japanese form of dance but instead wanted to do baton twirling and go to catechism. Furthermore, it was pretty obvious that she didn&amp;#039;t care whether or not she found a Japanese husband or not. Jeanne and probably many other girls just like her really were not foreign at all. Jeanne didn&amp;#039;t even speak Japanese. Americans at this time were terrified of anyone of that race and threw them all into the same category whether they belonged or not. This is a perfect example of someone who didn&amp;#039;t belong. Women were already fighting hard for more equality and these girls had it even harder because, just like African Americans, they didn&amp;#039;t have gender OR race on their side. - Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I’ve always thought that Japanese American internment/relocation camps were probably the worst decision FDR ever made in office. A lot of the people put into camps had lived in America for many years, and their children had never been to Japan in their lives. They were Americans, and some of them, as in the case of Jeanne, were very much disconnected from Japanese culture. Jeanne didn’t speak Japanese, and she twirled batons and wanted to be a Catholic. How much far removed from Japan could you get?&lt;br /&gt;
The Sone reading mentioned that “some people had little faith in the ideas and ideals of democracy” so they put Japanese Americans in camps to ensure loyalty. But it wasn’t Japanese Americans that didn’t have faith in democracy, it was the people who put them into camps. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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There has to be some sort of great irony in that Houston&amp;#039;s great disappointment in her father&amp;#039;s objection to her baptism was that she would never be a &amp;quot;white-gowned princess.&amp;quot; I wonder how the continued work of evangelical white Christians in the communities of minorities compared to the efforts of those schools set up for Native American children as seen in previous readings. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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== Wartime Workers (photo) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Oddly enough, I didn&amp;#039;t even notice that these women were wearing pants until I read it in the caption.  And then I thought it was interesting that they were actually allowed to wear them.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Of course pants are the most appropriate clothing for factory and industry work, but I wonder who realized this fact and gave women permission to wear pants in factories.  How did women feel about wearing men&amp;#039;s clothing while working?  Also, after reading Fanny Hill&amp;#039;s account, did these women enjoy their jobs as much as Fanny apparently did?  They certainly don&amp;#039;t look miserable, but then again they could be posing for the picture. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the pants, along the fact that all of the women have their hair up, may represent a man&amp;#039;s job.  If they women were wearing something more feminine it could imply that the job could or should be done by a woman.  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the women look pretty happy wearing pants in this picture, probably not because of the pants, but because they were in man pants doing what men did. To me this picture shows how World War II really united the country and created a strong sense of nationalism, where the opportunity for women doing men&amp;#039;s work was accepted. -- David Fitch&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_9_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 9 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_9_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-03-18T03:08:39Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* The Despair of Unemployed Women, Meridel LeSueur */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;==The Despair of Unemployed Women, Meridel LeSueur==&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this piece by LeSueur because she focused on the women waiting in the employment bureau for a job and told a story about their different backgrounds. It is interesting how LeSueur describes the options that these woman have. They could stay single or get married. A husband could bring security, but if they get married then their husbands could leave them with children and more mouths to feed. They could get money from charities, or they could be proud and starve in silence. The only part that I don’t know if I buy is the very last sentence, “being a slave without the security of a slave.” I am not sure if that is a fair comparison. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I can only imagine how it must have felt for these women to sit around all day, waiting for work.  LeSueur describes women who &amp;quot;sit hour after hour, day after day, waiting for a job to come in&amp;quot; (146).  One can really feel the desperation in these women&amp;#039;s lives; to just simply sit around, hoping a job would come in and they would be the lucky one to take it reveals scarcity and despair. I think this piece  shows the embarrassment that women felt when faced with the depression and unemployment.  Women were loosing jobs but as LeSueur points out, not many of them appear in places of charity.  Some women at this time must have felt ashamed when having to ask for food, shelter, etc.  I wonder why women at this time were so ashamed to receive charity, especially when they were willing to choose starvation, over help. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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This was a very moving piece and a very important one. We learn the stats, the percentages, but it also imperative to read stories like this, heartbreaking stories, that remind us of the human and individual side of the Great Depression. For years now, my image of the Great Depression has been the memorial in D.C. with the figures in the Bread Lines. As far as I can recall, all those figures are men. LeSueur reminded me of the extent that women suffered. In response to abratchi, I think women flirted with starvation and death instead of asking for charity, because though they were left with nothing else, at least then they still had their pride and self respect. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this piece heartbreaking. The desperation of these women was completely unbelievable. For me, the most moving part was the description of woman who went crazy because she couldn&amp;#039;t find work, and how the woman working behind the desk reacted. It makes you wonder who was truly suffering more-the employed woman who has to watch poverty and despair everyday, or the woman who has to watch her family starve and suffer. This truly depicts the helplessness all the women must have felt. I never really gave much thought to women in the depression, but this piece proves they suffered equally as much, or greater, than the men.-Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Meridel LeSueur pointed out some very interesting things about women and their reactions to the depression.  I think she was expressing that you don’t know what fear and hunger are until your faced with it, as well as the humiliation of asking for help.  I thought what LeSueur said about the women who took their last little bit of money and bought a hat.  She described it as being foolish and lustful,but in some ways I think, these were attempts of women reaching out for what life once was for them.  That if they could only have that hat, it might make themselves feel better, somehow regain what they had lost and feel whole again, and erase the humiliation they faced daily.  The hat became inward expression of a broken and humuliated women. -Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece was nothing short of heartbreaking for me to read. It must have been so hard for women the Great Depression era to deal with starvation and lack of work. After coming so far in society (beginning to work more, obtaining suffrage), women far so far. To me, it seems as if there was an intense struggle between dependence and independence going on. On one hand, women wanted to be independent and able to provide for themselves and their family, but were unable to do so as a result of no work, poor wages, etc. This is especially evident when LeSueur says &amp;quot;if she&amp;#039;s proud then she starves silently&amp;quot; (146). On the other hand, women were almost regressing to a state of dependence upon males and their roles as providers. LaSueur describes such a desolate time for women. A time of intense loneliness and hopelessness. It was an eye=opening read for me, predominantly because I have been given or blessed with so much. It is hard to recognize the hardships that so many women have had to overcome to arrive at today&amp;#039;s societal norms.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this piece was really interesting because it showed us a new side to the women of the Great Depression. It made them human. As historians we tend to look at the facts and forget that what we read about were real people with real emotions. I think that LeSueur did a great justice to these women by providing us with an insight into their personal world. I found the most interesting part of this piece to be about the women’s faces. LeSueur doesn’t simply remark about each individual face but them as a whole “all familiar to each other,” (146). The faces of the women were all alike to one another because they saw each other every day and everyone always looked the same, desperate for work. Besides Mrs. Grey, whose face would stick out in any crowd, LeSueur describes the women as being unable to look into one another’s eyes, “dreading to see that knowledge in each other’s eyes,” (146). The eyes are said to be a window into the soul and looking into them only to see the knowledge that there is no work for them must have been devastating.  It must have appeared that there was no light at the end of the tunnel, “like a women drowning and we turn away,” (149) as LeSueur said of Mrs. Grey. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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This was absolutely heart breaking to read. The images popped from the pages and really made these women become real and human. It is hard to understand the devestating effects the Depression had, and I think too often people look at the statistics (which are staggering and upsetting) but dont always stop and think about what really was going on. People were not sitting around passively going through the Depressio, they were lining up in hords to sit and wait hour after hour for, sometimes, months in hopes of any job opening up at all. LeSueur did an excellent job of being able to capture this feeling off deflated hope considering she was living it too, there was insight that can only be gained by seeing someone day in and day out desperate and needing that she was able to record in a manner that is heartbreaking. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the most compelling part of this story was when the author described the breakdown of a young woman the previous day that escalated into a fight with the woman in charge of trying to find jobs for all of these desperate women. Both women are in a state of absolute desperation although one has a job she too faces bleak despair every day. The young woman has come to the agency everyday for 8 months in hope of finding a job and the other is forced to try and find jobs for hundreds of women when there aren&amp;#039;t any to be had. It was heartbreaking for the other women to observe that now the only thing left for this woman is to go to the streets and turn to prostitution.--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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==American Women Ask Eleanor Roosevelt for Help==&lt;br /&gt;
Let me just say that almost all of the primary sources for this week broke my heart. Pain and sadness and such a thick sense of hope lost just oozing off of the paper. But the letters written to Eleanor Roosevelt struck me especially. That these women honestly believed Eleanor would try and help them says a lot about the way she related to Americans and how she tried to present herself as someone who understood how hard the Depression had become for American families. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe that one of the women sent her rings to the White House in exchange for baby clothes. She is a perfect example of why birth control should have been made widely available to women, as these families will do anything for their children and it terrifies them to bring babies into the world that they can&amp;#039;t afford. And her resistance to the idea of charity, as well as her desire for Eleanor Roosevelt to keep her request a secret, reflect the same attitudes of women Meridel LeSueur&amp;#039;s writings about how women do not seek assistance in nearly the same numbers as men do. They are supposed to be the infallible mothers who always provide for their children, and when they cannot they don&amp;#039;t want to admit that they haven&amp;#039;t achieved the ideal. On a side note, the letters made me wonder what sort of things the Obamas read these days, as the current economic situation isn&amp;#039;t the Depression, but I imagine they get some painful letters as well. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the letters to Eleanor Roosevelt to be really upsetting. I can’t imagine how desperate a person must be to send these letters, and their descriptions of what they need are so basic for survival. The only letter that didn’t touch me was the first, the woman has a $2000 mortgage that she can afford, but needs help finding a job for her husband because she has a baby on the way. When reading the other articles about women who had been saving for 15 years and had $30, to hear that this woman who could make a $2000 mortgage payment is really frustrating. But I guess it says a lot that an obviously well off woman is seeking help from the White House at the same time that very poor women are.  (I wonder if Mrs. H.E.C. ever got her rings back that she sent Mrs. Roosevelt as security, that was really sad to read…) – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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These letters were heart wrenching(as Mary Ann and Erin have already stated and I am sure everyone will continue to say).The desperation, the sadness, the hope all jump off the page. I think it was the hope that got me the most. I know it said that all the letters &amp;quot;were answered or passed on to the appropriate government agency for action&amp;quot; (149), but these were only 4 letters and the Roosevelts recieved up to 8,000 A DAY. I have hard time believing that they were all taken care of. I mean answering all these letters would have definitely created some jobs, but it just seems so sad that they had to call on the First Lady, the magical woman in D.C. with all the answers. It just seemed like they were (devastating)letters to Santa or something. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with all the other postings; this was terribly sad to read. The women who wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt seemed to have exhausted all of their other options and didn&amp;#039;t know where else to turn. I found it especially depressing how it seemed to bother the women to ask a favor of the Roosevelts, despite their extreme need. The hurt pride must have been just as terrible as the empty stomachs.-Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I can&amp;#039;t imagine asking the first lady and the president of the United States for help in buying neccesities or things I can not afford on my own. I wonder how many of the letters she responded to and if she actually gave the people what they asked for and not just advice or direction on where to go. I thought the one letter about the women who sent her prized possessions to Eleanor Roosevelt as security was sad. I also wonder if anyone today writes these kinds of letters to the president when they are not able to afford everything they need.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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As everyone else has noted the letters written to FDR and Eleanor broke my heart. As Erin asked I wonder if women not just Mrs. H.E.C. but also the other hundreds of women got their security deposits back? And as other letters showed some people wanted to send security deposits thinking that would help their case, did it? Or were the Roosevelts just as heart broken as I am today reading these letters and wished there was an easy fix-it button to hit? I could not imagine the lives of these women and what they endured to sit and write a letter asking for help not for them to survive but for the betterment of their families. Have any other administrations made public letters such as these or do they focus on other matters at hand and not internal affairs? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Mary Ann brings up an important point in regards to women&amp;#039;s resistance to accept charity.  While I agree with everyone who has posted that these letters were heartbreaking, I also felt a sharp sense of pride reflected in these letters.  Some women were willing to give collateral, like the woman with the wedding rings, just to ensure that any aid they were given was not viewed as charity, rather a loan. I think this reflects a lot of women&amp;#039;s sentiments at the time and I am curious to see what other objects or possessions women were willing to part with to receive things they needed.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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The letters to Mrs. Roosevelt were indeed upsetting, although I was most impressed with the woman seeking assistance for a new baby and offering to provide collateral.  My question is why didn’t she take Mrs. Roosevelt’s advice and seek assistance from the Welfare Association?  I understand pride and it’s commendable that she didn’t want to be seen as a charity case, but I think that the welfare of your children is always paramount.  I think that she should have sucked it up, gone to the Welfare Association and asked for assistance.  Social programs are put in place to help those in need for a specific period of time, I know I would have done anything and gone anywhere to help my kids.  In addition, I found it kind of amusing that in all of this tragic poverty, one child writes and asks for roller skates of all things.  I wonder if the Roosevelt’s or the White House had asked the citizens to send them letters of concern or if these are just individuals just too overburdened and looking for hope. EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to the above about the woman not wanting help from the Welfare Association, I think it&amp;#039;s just really a matter of pride, but completely understandable.  Welfare was a VERY new cause then, and before the only people who got charity were those of the low low working class.  These women writing Mrs. Roosevelt were obviously very educated, probably newly impoverished and couldn&amp;#039;t possibly imagine being indebted to someone. It is interesting to the note change in American views toward the presidency. I feel that today you would not see these huge amounts of letters to the President and First Lady in time of need. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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My first response to each of these letters is &amp;quot;Wow.&amp;quot; I literally am struggling to find something to say. I agree with ABRATCHI about feeling the pride reflected in the letters. These women were all very strong-willed, though they were in hopeless situations. They were able to place aside their fears and insecurities in order to ask the most powerful woman in America to help them. That alone is respectable. It is also interesting to see how the way American&amp;#039;s react to dire situation has changed in the past few decades. I sense that Americans, women in particular, have evolved to possess a more &amp;quot;go-getter&amp;quot; attitude.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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Like everyone has already expressed these letters were heartbreaking to read and its impossible not to feel these womens despair. They reminded me of a previous reading we did of the letters that African Americans in the south sent to a Chicago newspaper in their desperation to find a job. These women echoed the same amount of faith and trust that those women did in their letters. While these letters are extremely difficult to read it was amazing to see the kind of faith that the American people had in the government. Eleanor Roosevelt really made her self available to the people and whether or not she was able to help these women I think it must have helped them to know that there was someone out there who was listening. --Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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==Eleanor Roosevelt Applauds the Repeal of the Married Persons Clause of the Economy Act, 1937==&lt;br /&gt;
I can&amp;#039;t imagine how out of touch with the reality Congress must have been to pass a law that assumed all married women who were working were doing so for perfectly frivolous reasons. I liked that Eleanor Roosevelt pointed out that even women who weren&amp;#039;t working strictly for economic need had positive benefits on the economy and their communities. Yet even she feels the need to point out that working does not mean these women &amp;quot;are not good mothers and housekeepers&amp;quot; (pg. 348). Even in the midst of an economic disaster, somehow American society clung to those ideals of women as being strictly in the home. I guess the notion represented some kind of return to normalcy, though it had never really existed. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Mary Ann. I feel that in times of crisis the government looks more for the ideal (which was never realized by most people anyway) and then makes it a national campaign. I liked her point about &amp;quot;who is to say when a man earns enough to suppor his family&amp;quot; (348) because it brings attention to the fact that during this time men really had an even harder time making enough t provide food for his family, and if he could do that, did that mean he earned enough? What standard are they basing &amp;quot;enough&amp;quot; on, because it may be different fro every person. So who really can judge a married woman as &amp;quot;needing a job&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;frivolous&amp;quot;? From the letters read earlier about the plight of most women workers (and a huge number of male workers as well), no job during the Depression was frivolous, every little bit counted for the family to survive.--jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with all of statements made so far on this post.  It is pretty unbelievable that congress would even pass a law like this to begin with especially when women are now gaining more rights as well as opportunities in the workplace.  Women should not always be allowed to work, even if their husband is making money because it just provides more income and support.  Elanor makes some solid points, and all revolve around the basic question that if women want to work, why shouldn&amp;#039;t they.  Congress was right to repeal this act, especially during a dire economic crisis, but it should of never existed in the first place.  Women working also just creates mor jobs and opportunities for everyone else and it was about time congress did something about it. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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==Militant Housewives During the Great Depression, Annelise Orleck==&lt;br /&gt;
So many married lost their jobs or were barred from acquiring them because they were married, but this didn&amp;#039;t stop them from carving out a role for themselves amidst the hardships of the Great Depression. As we learned in class, labor unions gained strength during this time, so it makes sense that women would also come to adopt organization as a means to be heard. Also, since it seems that so many women either did not seek public assistance or who could not because of the structure of the New Deal programs, activities like strikes and boycotts probably seemed the only real way to continue to feed their families, something that consistently fell on their shoulders to do. In a way these women were pulled out of their homes by their desire to stay in their homes, working to ensure that they could afford to continue to be proper wives and mothers. They only noticed that they were defying social norms when others, namely men, began to complain about it. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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Orleck mentions that working-class women becoming involved in activism created public tensions because they were politicizing the traditional roles of women as wives and mothers. But hadn’t that been going on for a while? Reformers and suffragists became involved in the public world of politics, and they used their roles as wives and mothers and the associations that came with them as justification to enter that public realm. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that this public realm offered some release for these women, laws had put restrictions on them and they felt it was there duty to stand up though not to be just heard but adamant on change.  Women had been an intricate part of the family income whether she worked in or outside the home.  She was knowledgeable of how the system worked.  It was no surprise that they took on this role.   -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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As I was reading Annelise Orleck’s writing, what stood out to me was the exchanges of goods that took place without using any money.  I thought about the story my great grandmother told me about her parents farm.  It was a big farm and people throughout Culpeper county would come to exchange goods they had or work for food on their farm.  She had commented that they were living comfortably till the depression hit.  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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The ways in which these women helped to define the family as a strong political unit and influence is interesting.  In spite of all the examples Orleck has of the print media sort of mocking them, these women seem to have had a definite and intimidating presence in the commercial market and politics of their communities.  I just got the sense from reading this article that these women were strongly organized and politicized - even just in the practices of barter and garden co-ops to ease the hardships of the depression - and all of this in the name of protecting their family.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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I&amp;#039;m sincerely impressed by the efforts of the housewives that were described in this section. My personal favorite is when &amp;quot;Black mothers in cleveland, unable to convince a local power company to delay shutting off electricity in the homes of families who had not paid their bills won resotration of power after they hung wet laundry over every utility line in the neighborhood.&amp;quot; (page 402)That is crafty AND it got what they wanted to get accomplished accomplished. Although I don&amp;#039;t support the logic that a woman&amp;#039;s place is in the home, I have to give the housewives their credit for being as politically active as was described. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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==Louise Mitchell Denounces the &amp;quot;Slave Markets&amp;quot; Where Domestics Are hired in New York City, 1940==&lt;br /&gt;
I found it interesting how Mitchell compared domestic servitude to a slave market.  This piece, like almost all the other primary sources, really reveal the sense of distress that many women, namely black, felt as a result of the Depression.  Women were willing to stand on streets and street corners all day in the hopes of being selected for a domestic job, which at this time were scarce.  Her piece hints at a backwards-ness for blacks because despite slavery&amp;#039;s end after the civil war, working as domestics for primarily white families has similarities to [old] slavery.  While domestic servitude was still  one of the most common jobs for all  women, the impact of the depression hit this profession hard, hence why Mitchell writes that women spent endless hours hoping for a job.  The reality of this work is also reflected through this piece.  Domestic servitude was not an easy job and it often required hard labor, long hours and little pay.  I think the desperation of the depression reveals women&amp;#039;s willingness to take these jobs, simply because some money was better than no money.  Mitchell makes an important distinction about race, by stating that about half of all domestics are negro and ends her piece by stating that reform needs to occur for &amp;quot;the most oppressed section of the working class- Negro women&amp;quot; (350).  Black women at this time felt the affects much harder than white women, but I think it is important to understand that most people, even whites were suffering from the effects of the depression, not just African Americans.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought it was interesting that the black woman&amp;#039;s domestic service would be labeled a &amp;quot;slave market.&amp;quot; Reading about the life of those women and what they did for work makes me better understand why it was termed that. They stand outside waiting for someone(presumably a white person) to come hire them, they do back-breaking work, and get paid very little. I bet they were probably at least thankful to have any type of job though to earn some money during the depression for their family. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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==Dorothy Dunbar Bromley Comments on Birth Control and the Depression, 1934==&lt;br /&gt;
Obviously this is an issue that is still debated about today, and it is tough to say if it will ever be totally solved.  Bromley is adamant on the use of birth control, especially during the great depression, when many families cannot really afford a child in their lives.  It is, however, very difficult to force people to use birth control, especially when the methods at this time were so rudamentary.  It is impossible to force all families to use birth control, but during a time like this, I beleive the use of it should be taken much more seriously because many children born during this time, will have a very difficult life right from the start. -afrisk  &lt;br /&gt;
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I think my favorite part of women that we have studied so far has been about the issue of birth control. I think it’s because, even as a women in the 21st century it’s something I can relate to the women of the 20th century and earlier. Birth control and the processes of staying a healthy woman have evolved over the years, but the ideals and concerns haven’t. I think it’s also very interesting to see the evolution of the methods and devices used before modern day birth control; it’s a very intriguing history. In my joy of learning about birth control, I loved this article. Some of the statics that Bromley presented were somewhat comical, such as “in 1932 there were 43 percent more births in families without any employed workers than in families with one or more full-time workers,” (338). In summary, couples who weren’t employed were having more children because they had more free time to get busy. Why couldn’t scientists just state that? Then the statistic that “rich classes who took no preventative measures were as fertile as the women of the poorer classes, colored women included,” (338).  Did white, middle-class and upper-class women really think that working class women were more fertile? Could that be a racist issue? I suspect that white middle and upper-class women thought that because the “working-class” ranked low on the social hierarchy, that couldn’t control themselves, when they really just couldn’t afford or weren’t offered birth control? Besides that Bromley cites that the “chairman of the section on Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Abdominal Surgery, listed birth control as one of the four major problems in gynecology,” (339) but then the committee refused to study about. Why? Was the subject still too taboo to speak of, even at a committee meeting about Gynecology and Obstetrics? Just like last week&amp;#039;s article on Generational Conflicts by Bromley, she writes in a certain way to influence people, this time the doctors and committees who need to make birth control available to everyone, not just to those that can pay for it. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Bromley definitely makes some strong points for the use of birth control.  However I think making birth control available to everyone is easier said than done, especially in the middle of a depression.  How much could legislation do to actually get the lower classes to start using birth control?  Spreading the use of birth control to the lower classes would no doubt cost money, and during this time the government had many other things to put money towards.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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Dorothy Dunbar Bromley’s Comments on Birth Control and the Depression were very informative. I had been wondering about child birth during the depression era for a few days now so I was pleased to read this article. As Morgan mentioned, I too realized that unemployed poor families had more time to get it on, hence the increasing birthrate. I find it disillusioning that an issue that is taboo like birth control was at the time, is only publicly considered because it is personally affecting the middle-classes pocket books.  It seemed to me that the dialogue at this time began because the middle-class was getting real sick of paying for all of these new babies. It’s sad but that is just the way it goes with so many issues in politics.  It was also not surprising to read that the legislation forward movement towards birth-control for families affected by the depression was dependent on the doctors forward motion, and vice versa, getting yet another piece of legislation tied up in bureaucratic hell! I agree J Rowley, that it is a challenge to provide birth control to the masses, it take research, time, and most of all money, but it seems to me that the major hold up was the religious opposition.  Bromley’s comments mentioned the Protestant and Catholic opponents of the change in Comstock Laws felt that providing birth control was “synonymous with prostitution”(340). Many of the people who felt this way were themselves legislatures so I think that the issue was wrought with complications and challenges. I wonder how many of the poor families who were having so many children abandoned or gave away their babies…not a cheer thought, just something I have been wondering. –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I also, like Morgan, completely agree that this is an issue that is still debated about today. Granted, our generation seemingly has an easier access to birth control, but even with insurance and information on it it still is pretty ridiculously expensive. On the other hand, if there is a chance that you could get pregnant AGAIN when you are already too poor to feed yourself and your children (even if it is because of circumstances outside of your control) then stop having sex. It seems like a pretty easy sacrifice to make (especially since there are other means of having an intimate relationship with your husband or wife...) when you&amp;#039;re already struggling to survive. It&amp;#039;s stupid. and on page 338 when Bromley quotes &amp;quot;it is evident that a high birth rate during the depression prevailed in families which could least afford, from any point of view, to assume this added responsibility&amp;quot; it makes me only imagine who suffers from the burden of that new responsibilty-- Society as a whole and more importantly that child born into a crappy world where it wont even be able to eat enough to survive. Having a child during the depression when you couldn&amp;#039;t afford it, especially if you knew the risk you were taking by having sex, is selfish. I also am disgusted at the fact that society wouldn&amp;#039;t allow a woman to control whether or not she HAD another child because the officials in society were sooooo afraid about talking about female sexuality, birth control, and the religious implications of a woman controlling her body has. Ultimately though, it is the children born accidentially into this society that suffer more than anyone and eventually end up perpetually on welfare because they had no other options because society wouldn&amp;#039;t allow their mother to practice immoral birth control, and their parents couldn&amp;#039;t refrain from having them. -Ssellers.&lt;br /&gt;
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“couples who weren’t employed were having more children because they had more free time to get busy. Why couldn’t scientists just state that?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;if there is a chance that you could get pregnant AGAIN when you are already too poor to feed yourself and your children ... then stop having sex&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Having a child during the depression when you couldn&amp;#039;t afford it ... is selfish.&amp;quot; &lt;br /&gt;
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I hate to be the one who has to call people out but I am offended ON BEHALF of those struggling working-class Depression-era women whose complicated and difficult lives we&amp;#039;re so flippantly joking about. I think we need to take a step back and put some historic context on these events--the temptation to cast our modern lens about birth control, considering what we know now, on events, personal decisons, and legislation so permanently mired in the past is alluring, but dangerous. Think about what it was like to be one of those women--the desperate women who inspired Margaret Sanger to push for birth control in the first place. Imagine yourself as one of the women we&amp;#039;re talking about this week--married to a husband you may or may not love but whom society is screaming at you that you should, the both of you unemployed, going out every day to try to find work, any work at all, willing to suffer long hours and terrible conditions for a tiny bit of money that you desperately need. You could stand for hours in a breadline, trying not to make eye contact with all the other miserable women around you, or you could go to the welfare office and attempt to reapply again, even though you&amp;#039;ll be denied just like you have all the other times before, but your dignity is one of the only things you have left to your name and you just can&amp;#039;t degrade yourself that far. Not today. So you scrounge for small jobs, anything you can do--cooking, washing, cleaning--with no job security and no legislation to protect you. You take home the pennies you made, which you add to the nickels your husband managed to get, and you have to scrape it all together to buy a very small amount of food, which goes to feed your kids and occasionally you and your husband. How many kids do you have? 3? 4? 5? Too many mouths to feed as it is, and then one month your period is late and you know that you&amp;#039;re pregnant, AGAIN, and you don&amp;#039;t have any money for clothes, food, hospital bills, or anything else a new life requires. So what do you do? What CAN you do? Beg for charity? Write letters to the First Lady that will go unanswered? Get rid of the child you can&amp;#039;t have with a coat hanger? Can you even imagine that? And years later some college student sitting in her class says you should&amp;#039;ve just stopped having sex. That if you hadn&amp;#039;t used all that &amp;quot;free time&amp;quot; to get busy, maybe you wouldn&amp;#039;t be so damn poor? That you should give up the only time you ever feel close to someone else, the only time you feel beautiful or loved? Or, worse, that you should somehow convince your husband not to have sex with you, knowing that there are very few laws that would help you if he chose otherwise against your will? Maybe if you knew any birth control methods that had more than a 5% success rate you could be saved from a bit of that misery. Maybe. There are, of course, the problems of logistics--manufacture and distribution at a dirt-cheap price you could afford--even if the problems of legislation and government blocks are overturned. &lt;br /&gt;
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THIS is why we study history. When we see life the way someone else once did, when we consider others&amp;#039; hardships and are able to empathize with their problems, we learn to get outside of ourselves and our own narrow opinions. If you walk through life with blinders that you&amp;#039;ve constructed for yourself or let others construct for you, you&amp;#039;ll miss so much of the world around you, and we can&amp;#039;t afford that blindness any more than we can afford to forget how these women thought and felt. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Margaret Jarman Hagood, The Life Cycle of a White Southern Farm Woman==&lt;br /&gt;
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This section was almost as heart-wrenching for me to read as the letters to the Roosevelt&amp;#039;s. Mollie&amp;#039;s life is something I could not imagine nor do I think endure. She grew up faster than many women due to her growing number of siblings and a mother who was unable to keep up with all of the chores, and let her education go by the wayside to help her parents. I did enjoy that she was able to get away from the farm for awhile and be her own woman, earning what she wanted and turning down potential suitors. Did all young women who made it away from the farm feel the same? And did they all settle for marriages as she did with Jim? I would want to know how the story would of ended had Mollie been allowed to return to work in the factory; how her ideas of family may have changed. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Margaret Jarman Hagood’s piece The Life Cycle of a White Southern Farm Woman was quite interesting and offered a personal glimpse into the transition of from a girl, to a young woman, and finally to a mother. The main character Mollie seems to already fill the role of the mother while her own mother continues to have child after child which takes a toll on her health. Mollie’s observation of her mother’s child rearing experience obviously shaped her own, to the point where she was often stating that she did not want to have children or get married. In the end of course she follows the same path and seems to come to terms with this. Though the narrative of this story was intriguing, it did not delve into the reasons why these women were having so many children. I would venture to say that it was due to a lack of access to birth control for white women in the south. That being said, this piece challenged me to compare the experiences of the women in the Urban North and the Agrarian south.  While women in the South were birthing larger families, women in the North were hoping to decrease their family side. Mollie seems to view a large family as an albatross around her neck when she is a young woman because she has set goals for her life but when she is old she “transferred her efforts to achieving them for her daughter” (161).  I could see how people without children would find this a depressing thought but I think that it is endearing a bit. When viewing Mollie’s situation with a modern eye, or forcing modern ideas onto her life, it is hard to see how this transfer is a beautiful thing but in reality, Mollie’s is doing something amazing, she was, throughout her life self sacrificing.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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Sorry for writing so much, this story really sparked something for me. - Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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==A Mexican-American Childhood during the Depression, Carlotta Silvas Martin==&lt;br /&gt;
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We have read sources that focused on the support of Mexican American communities in the West, but this source is evidence that those communities continued to exist during the Great Depression and even gained strength.  I found Carlotta&amp;#039;s family&amp;#039;s generosity amazing during such a rough time.  Of course her family had a little more security since her father was a miner, but they still did not receive a great deal of money.  They seemed to be thankful that they receieved any money and shared their blessings with the less fortunate.  The Great Depression is often characterized as a depressing, woeful time, and yet Carlotta and some of her fellow community members celebrated holidays with parties and parades, went to the movies and attended plays.  Carlotta is also very involved in community service that raises money and provides entertainment for the community.  While I&amp;#039;m sure the life was very hard for Superior during the Depression, Carlotta looks back on that part of her life in a positive light and remembers the strong, thriving community that existed. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women in a Soup Line (photograph)==&lt;br /&gt;
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This picture surprised me because after reading the other sources, I got the distinct impression that most women were too proud to stand in soup lines and tried their hardest to avoid having to resort to them.  And yet, here is a picture of quite a few women in a soup line happily accepting the charity.  And they didn&amp;#039;t oppose to having a picture taken of them!  Do we just have an overwhelming amount of sources that focus on women who were anti-soup lines, when that wasn&amp;#039;t actually the case?  Or did those women actually stand in soup lines and were too proud to admit it?  Something to consider is the fact that the women in the photo are Mexican Americans while the sources were written by white women.  Perhaps the societal expectations were different for these two groups that would legitamately make white women afraid of being seen accepting charity. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that perhaps the women photographed were of a different mentality than those read in other primary sources we read. These women were Mexican American women, who were probably accustomed to not having the best that society can offer, they were not part of the prototypical white middle class ideal before the Depression. Also, they eithe had to go, or volunteered to go, around the back of the soup kitchen, so maybe they did face the same struggle with accepting cherity as other women we have read (or they were not allowed to go in because they didn&amp;#039;t qualify for aide), but after weighing the option of going hungry or being able to feed their family for the nigt, it cmes down to you do what you have to do to survive. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Like CBrau I found this photograph very odd. From reading Meridel LeSueur’s “Women in Breadlines” I also thought that women were too proud to wait in a soup line. I got the notion that women would feed all of their family before themselves and if they did not have a family that they would starve because they were too timid to wait in line for food. These women don’t seem to timid or scared to be standing waiting for food at all, they’re smiling in fact. Maybe it is because these women are Mexican-American? Like jmarshal states that they are used to not having the best of society and probably have no problem asking for help. I think that we’ve been focusing on the white middle-class women much, who were shaped by their lifestyle before the depression. Before the depression these women were independent and shied away from receiving any help at all, especially from a man (such as pictured here). Mexican –American’s always have had large families, retaining the structure as man being head of the household, surely did not feel this pressure to uphold ideals that she never had and gladly accepted help. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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The caption notes that it was rare to see women on a breadline/soup line during the Depression, which I found strange considering the Orleck article on housewives. However, I googled some pictures, and it seems to be true. Weren’t women doing everything possible to provide for their families? So why not stand in breadlines? Was there some kind of masculine association with it? You’d think standing in a line for handouts would actually be emasculating. Maybe it was because men were expected to provide for their families, and this was just another way to do it. -- Taylor Brann&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

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		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_9_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 9 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_9_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-03-18T02:55:39Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* American Women Ask Eleanor Roosevelt for Help */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;==The Despair of Unemployed Women, Meridel LeSueur==&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this piece by LeSueur because she focused on the women waiting in the employment bureau for a job and told a story about their different backgrounds. It is interesting how LeSueur describes the options that these woman have. They could stay single or get married. A husband could bring security, but if they get married then their husbands could leave them with children and more mouths to feed. They could get money from charities, or they could be proud and starve in silence. The only part that I don’t know if I buy is the very last sentence, “being a slave without the security of a slave.” I am not sure if that is a fair comparison. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I can only imagine how it must have felt for these women to sit around all day, waiting for work.  LeSueur describes women who &amp;quot;sit hour after hour, day after day, waiting for a job to come in&amp;quot; (146).  One can really feel the desperation in these women&amp;#039;s lives; to just simply sit around, hoping a job would come in and they would be the lucky one to take it reveals scarcity and despair. I think this piece  shows the embarrassment that women felt when faced with the depression and unemployment.  Women were loosing jobs but as LeSueur points out, not many of them appear in places of charity.  Some women at this time must have felt ashamed when having to ask for food, shelter, etc.  I wonder why women at this time were so ashamed to receive charity, especially when they were willing to choose starvation, over help. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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This was a very moving piece and a very important one. We learn the stats, the percentages, but it also imperative to read stories like this, heartbreaking stories, that remind us of the human and individual side of the Great Depression. For years now, my image of the Great Depression has been the memorial in D.C. with the figures in the Bread Lines. As far as I can recall, all those figures are men. LeSueur reminded me of the extent that women suffered. In response to abratchi, I think women flirted with starvation and death instead of asking for charity, because though they were left with nothing else, at least then they still had their pride and self respect. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this piece heartbreaking. The desperation of these women was completely unbelievable. For me, the most moving part was the description of woman who went crazy because she couldn&amp;#039;t find work, and how the woman working behind the desk reacted. It makes you wonder who was truly suffering more-the employed woman who has to watch poverty and despair everyday, or the woman who has to watch her family starve and suffer. This truly depicts the helplessness all the women must have felt. I never really gave much thought to women in the depression, but this piece proves they suffered equally as much, or greater, than the men.-Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Meridel LeSueur pointed out some very interesting things about women and their reactions to the depression.  I think she was expressing that you don’t know what fear and hunger are until your faced with it, as well as the humiliation of asking for help.  I thought what LeSueur said about the women who took their last little bit of money and bought a hat.  She described it as being foolish and lustful,but in some ways I think, these were attempts of women reaching out for what life once was for them.  That if they could only have that hat, it might make themselves feel better, somehow regain what they had lost and feel whole again, and erase the humiliation they faced daily.  The hat became inward expression of a broken and humuliated women. -Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece was nothing short of heartbreaking for me to read. It must have been so hard for women the Great Depression era to deal with starvation and lack of work. After coming so far in society (beginning to work more, obtaining suffrage), women far so far. To me, it seems as if there was an intense struggle between dependence and independence going on. On one hand, women wanted to be independent and able to provide for themselves and their family, but were unable to do so as a result of no work, poor wages, etc. This is especially evident when LeSueur says &amp;quot;if she&amp;#039;s proud then she starves silently&amp;quot; (146). On the other hand, women were almost regressing to a state of dependence upon males and their roles as providers. LaSueur describes such a desolate time for women. A time of intense loneliness and hopelessness. It was an eye=opening read for me, predominantly because I have been given or blessed with so much. It is hard to recognize the hardships that so many women have had to overcome to arrive at today&amp;#039;s societal norms.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this piece was really interesting because it showed us a new side to the women of the Great Depression. It made them human. As historians we tend to look at the facts and forget that what we read about were real people with real emotions. I think that LeSueur did a great justice to these women by providing us with an insight into their personal world. I found the most interesting part of this piece to be about the women’s faces. LeSueur doesn’t simply remark about each individual face but them as a whole “all familiar to each other,” (146). The faces of the women were all alike to one another because they saw each other every day and everyone always looked the same, desperate for work. Besides Mrs. Grey, whose face would stick out in any crowd, LeSueur describes the women as being unable to look into one another’s eyes, “dreading to see that knowledge in each other’s eyes,” (146). The eyes are said to be a window into the soul and looking into them only to see the knowledge that there is no work for them must have been devastating.  It must have appeared that there was no light at the end of the tunnel, “like a women drowning and we turn away,” (149) as LeSueur said of Mrs. Grey. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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This was absolutely heart breaking to read. The images popped from the pages and really made these women become real and human. It is hard to understand the devestating effects the Depression had, and I think too often people look at the statistics (which are staggering and upsetting) but dont always stop and think about what really was going on. People were not sitting around passively going through the Depressio, they were lining up in hords to sit and wait hour after hour for, sometimes, months in hopes of any job opening up at all. LeSueur did an excellent job of being able to capture this feeling off deflated hope considering she was living it too, there was insight that can only be gained by seeing someone day in and day out desperate and needing that she was able to record in a manner that is heartbreaking. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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==American Women Ask Eleanor Roosevelt for Help==&lt;br /&gt;
Let me just say that almost all of the primary sources for this week broke my heart. Pain and sadness and such a thick sense of hope lost just oozing off of the paper. But the letters written to Eleanor Roosevelt struck me especially. That these women honestly believed Eleanor would try and help them says a lot about the way she related to Americans and how she tried to present herself as someone who understood how hard the Depression had become for American families. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe that one of the women sent her rings to the White House in exchange for baby clothes. She is a perfect example of why birth control should have been made widely available to women, as these families will do anything for their children and it terrifies them to bring babies into the world that they can&amp;#039;t afford. And her resistance to the idea of charity, as well as her desire for Eleanor Roosevelt to keep her request a secret, reflect the same attitudes of women Meridel LeSueur&amp;#039;s writings about how women do not seek assistance in nearly the same numbers as men do. They are supposed to be the infallible mothers who always provide for their children, and when they cannot they don&amp;#039;t want to admit that they haven&amp;#039;t achieved the ideal. On a side note, the letters made me wonder what sort of things the Obamas read these days, as the current economic situation isn&amp;#039;t the Depression, but I imagine they get some painful letters as well. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the letters to Eleanor Roosevelt to be really upsetting. I can’t imagine how desperate a person must be to send these letters, and their descriptions of what they need are so basic for survival. The only letter that didn’t touch me was the first, the woman has a $2000 mortgage that she can afford, but needs help finding a job for her husband because she has a baby on the way. When reading the other articles about women who had been saving for 15 years and had $30, to hear that this woman who could make a $2000 mortgage payment is really frustrating. But I guess it says a lot that an obviously well off woman is seeking help from the White House at the same time that very poor women are.  (I wonder if Mrs. H.E.C. ever got her rings back that she sent Mrs. Roosevelt as security, that was really sad to read…) – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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These letters were heart wrenching(as Mary Ann and Erin have already stated and I am sure everyone will continue to say).The desperation, the sadness, the hope all jump off the page. I think it was the hope that got me the most. I know it said that all the letters &amp;quot;were answered or passed on to the appropriate government agency for action&amp;quot; (149), but these were only 4 letters and the Roosevelts recieved up to 8,000 A DAY. I have hard time believing that they were all taken care of. I mean answering all these letters would have definitely created some jobs, but it just seems so sad that they had to call on the First Lady, the magical woman in D.C. with all the answers. It just seemed like they were (devastating)letters to Santa or something. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with all the other postings; this was terribly sad to read. The women who wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt seemed to have exhausted all of their other options and didn&amp;#039;t know where else to turn. I found it especially depressing how it seemed to bother the women to ask a favor of the Roosevelts, despite their extreme need. The hurt pride must have been just as terrible as the empty stomachs.-Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I can&amp;#039;t imagine asking the first lady and the president of the United States for help in buying neccesities or things I can not afford on my own. I wonder how many of the letters she responded to and if she actually gave the people what they asked for and not just advice or direction on where to go. I thought the one letter about the women who sent her prized possessions to Eleanor Roosevelt as security was sad. I also wonder if anyone today writes these kinds of letters to the president when they are not able to afford everything they need.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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As everyone else has noted the letters written to FDR and Eleanor broke my heart. As Erin asked I wonder if women not just Mrs. H.E.C. but also the other hundreds of women got their security deposits back? And as other letters showed some people wanted to send security deposits thinking that would help their case, did it? Or were the Roosevelts just as heart broken as I am today reading these letters and wished there was an easy fix-it button to hit? I could not imagine the lives of these women and what they endured to sit and write a letter asking for help not for them to survive but for the betterment of their families. Have any other administrations made public letters such as these or do they focus on other matters at hand and not internal affairs? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Mary Ann brings up an important point in regards to women&amp;#039;s resistance to accept charity.  While I agree with everyone who has posted that these letters were heartbreaking, I also felt a sharp sense of pride reflected in these letters.  Some women were willing to give collateral, like the woman with the wedding rings, just to ensure that any aid they were given was not viewed as charity, rather a loan. I think this reflects a lot of women&amp;#039;s sentiments at the time and I am curious to see what other objects or possessions women were willing to part with to receive things they needed.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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The letters to Mrs. Roosevelt were indeed upsetting, although I was most impressed with the woman seeking assistance for a new baby and offering to provide collateral.  My question is why didn’t she take Mrs. Roosevelt’s advice and seek assistance from the Welfare Association?  I understand pride and it’s commendable that she didn’t want to be seen as a charity case, but I think that the welfare of your children is always paramount.  I think that she should have sucked it up, gone to the Welfare Association and asked for assistance.  Social programs are put in place to help those in need for a specific period of time, I know I would have done anything and gone anywhere to help my kids.  In addition, I found it kind of amusing that in all of this tragic poverty, one child writes and asks for roller skates of all things.  I wonder if the Roosevelt’s or the White House had asked the citizens to send them letters of concern or if these are just individuals just too overburdened and looking for hope. EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to the above about the woman not wanting help from the Welfare Association, I think it&amp;#039;s just really a matter of pride, but completely understandable.  Welfare was a VERY new cause then, and before the only people who got charity were those of the low low working class.  These women writing Mrs. Roosevelt were obviously very educated, probably newly impoverished and couldn&amp;#039;t possibly imagine being indebted to someone. It is interesting to the note change in American views toward the presidency. I feel that today you would not see these huge amounts of letters to the President and First Lady in time of need. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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My first response to each of these letters is &amp;quot;Wow.&amp;quot; I literally am struggling to find something to say. I agree with ABRATCHI about feeling the pride reflected in the letters. These women were all very strong-willed, though they were in hopeless situations. They were able to place aside their fears and insecurities in order to ask the most powerful woman in America to help them. That alone is respectable. It is also interesting to see how the way American&amp;#039;s react to dire situation has changed in the past few decades. I sense that Americans, women in particular, have evolved to possess a more &amp;quot;go-getter&amp;quot; attitude.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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Like everyone has already expressed these letters were heartbreaking to read and its impossible not to feel these womens despair. They reminded me of a previous reading we did of the letters that African Americans in the south sent to a Chicago newspaper in their desperation to find a job. These women echoed the same amount of faith and trust that those women did in their letters. While these letters are extremely difficult to read it was amazing to see the kind of faith that the American people had in the government. Eleanor Roosevelt really made her self available to the people and whether or not she was able to help these women I think it must have helped them to know that there was someone out there who was listening. --Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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==Eleanor Roosevelt Applauds the Repeal of the Married Persons Clause of the Economy Act, 1937==&lt;br /&gt;
I can&amp;#039;t imagine how out of touch with the reality Congress must have been to pass a law that assumed all married women who were working were doing so for perfectly frivolous reasons. I liked that Eleanor Roosevelt pointed out that even women who weren&amp;#039;t working strictly for economic need had positive benefits on the economy and their communities. Yet even she feels the need to point out that working does not mean these women &amp;quot;are not good mothers and housekeepers&amp;quot; (pg. 348). Even in the midst of an economic disaster, somehow American society clung to those ideals of women as being strictly in the home. I guess the notion represented some kind of return to normalcy, though it had never really existed. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Mary Ann. I feel that in times of crisis the government looks more for the ideal (which was never realized by most people anyway) and then makes it a national campaign. I liked her point about &amp;quot;who is to say when a man earns enough to suppor his family&amp;quot; (348) because it brings attention to the fact that during this time men really had an even harder time making enough t provide food for his family, and if he could do that, did that mean he earned enough? What standard are they basing &amp;quot;enough&amp;quot; on, because it may be different fro every person. So who really can judge a married woman as &amp;quot;needing a job&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;frivolous&amp;quot;? From the letters read earlier about the plight of most women workers (and a huge number of male workers as well), no job during the Depression was frivolous, every little bit counted for the family to survive.--jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with all of statements made so far on this post.  It is pretty unbelievable that congress would even pass a law like this to begin with especially when women are now gaining more rights as well as opportunities in the workplace.  Women should not always be allowed to work, even if their husband is making money because it just provides more income and support.  Elanor makes some solid points, and all revolve around the basic question that if women want to work, why shouldn&amp;#039;t they.  Congress was right to repeal this act, especially during a dire economic crisis, but it should of never existed in the first place.  Women working also just creates mor jobs and opportunities for everyone else and it was about time congress did something about it. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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==Militant Housewives During the Great Depression, Annelise Orleck==&lt;br /&gt;
So many married lost their jobs or were barred from acquiring them because they were married, but this didn&amp;#039;t stop them from carving out a role for themselves amidst the hardships of the Great Depression. As we learned in class, labor unions gained strength during this time, so it makes sense that women would also come to adopt organization as a means to be heard. Also, since it seems that so many women either did not seek public assistance or who could not because of the structure of the New Deal programs, activities like strikes and boycotts probably seemed the only real way to continue to feed their families, something that consistently fell on their shoulders to do. In a way these women were pulled out of their homes by their desire to stay in their homes, working to ensure that they could afford to continue to be proper wives and mothers. They only noticed that they were defying social norms when others, namely men, began to complain about it. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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Orleck mentions that working-class women becoming involved in activism created public tensions because they were politicizing the traditional roles of women as wives and mothers. But hadn’t that been going on for a while? Reformers and suffragists became involved in the public world of politics, and they used their roles as wives and mothers and the associations that came with them as justification to enter that public realm. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that this public realm offered some release for these women, laws had put restrictions on them and they felt it was there duty to stand up though not to be just heard but adamant on change.  Women had been an intricate part of the family income whether she worked in or outside the home.  She was knowledgeable of how the system worked.  It was no surprise that they took on this role.   -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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As I was reading Annelise Orleck’s writing, what stood out to me was the exchanges of goods that took place without using any money.  I thought about the story my great grandmother told me about her parents farm.  It was a big farm and people throughout Culpeper county would come to exchange goods they had or work for food on their farm.  She had commented that they were living comfortably till the depression hit.  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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The ways in which these women helped to define the family as a strong political unit and influence is interesting.  In spite of all the examples Orleck has of the print media sort of mocking them, these women seem to have had a definite and intimidating presence in the commercial market and politics of their communities.  I just got the sense from reading this article that these women were strongly organized and politicized - even just in the practices of barter and garden co-ops to ease the hardships of the depression - and all of this in the name of protecting their family.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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I&amp;#039;m sincerely impressed by the efforts of the housewives that were described in this section. My personal favorite is when &amp;quot;Black mothers in cleveland, unable to convince a local power company to delay shutting off electricity in the homes of families who had not paid their bills won resotration of power after they hung wet laundry over every utility line in the neighborhood.&amp;quot; (page 402)That is crafty AND it got what they wanted to get accomplished accomplished. Although I don&amp;#039;t support the logic that a woman&amp;#039;s place is in the home, I have to give the housewives their credit for being as politically active as was described. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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==Louise Mitchell Denounces the &amp;quot;Slave Markets&amp;quot; Where Domestics Are hired in New York City, 1940==&lt;br /&gt;
I found it interesting how Mitchell compared domestic servitude to a slave market.  This piece, like almost all the other primary sources, really reveal the sense of distress that many women, namely black, felt as a result of the Depression.  Women were willing to stand on streets and street corners all day in the hopes of being selected for a domestic job, which at this time were scarce.  Her piece hints at a backwards-ness for blacks because despite slavery&amp;#039;s end after the civil war, working as domestics for primarily white families has similarities to [old] slavery.  While domestic servitude was still  one of the most common jobs for all  women, the impact of the depression hit this profession hard, hence why Mitchell writes that women spent endless hours hoping for a job.  The reality of this work is also reflected through this piece.  Domestic servitude was not an easy job and it often required hard labor, long hours and little pay.  I think the desperation of the depression reveals women&amp;#039;s willingness to take these jobs, simply because some money was better than no money.  Mitchell makes an important distinction about race, by stating that about half of all domestics are negro and ends her piece by stating that reform needs to occur for &amp;quot;the most oppressed section of the working class- Negro women&amp;quot; (350).  Black women at this time felt the affects much harder than white women, but I think it is important to understand that most people, even whites were suffering from the effects of the depression, not just African Americans.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought it was interesting that the black woman&amp;#039;s domestic service would be labeled a &amp;quot;slave market.&amp;quot; Reading about the life of those women and what they did for work makes me better understand why it was termed that. They stand outside waiting for someone(presumably a white person) to come hire them, they do back-breaking work, and get paid very little. I bet they were probably at least thankful to have any type of job though to earn some money during the depression for their family. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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==Dorothy Dunbar Bromley Comments on Birth Control and the Depression, 1934==&lt;br /&gt;
Obviously this is an issue that is still debated about today, and it is tough to say if it will ever be totally solved.  Bromley is adamant on the use of birth control, especially during the great depression, when many families cannot really afford a child in their lives.  It is, however, very difficult to force people to use birth control, especially when the methods at this time were so rudamentary.  It is impossible to force all families to use birth control, but during a time like this, I beleive the use of it should be taken much more seriously because many children born during this time, will have a very difficult life right from the start. -afrisk  &lt;br /&gt;
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I think my favorite part of women that we have studied so far has been about the issue of birth control. I think it’s because, even as a women in the 21st century it’s something I can relate to the women of the 20th century and earlier. Birth control and the processes of staying a healthy woman have evolved over the years, but the ideals and concerns haven’t. I think it’s also very interesting to see the evolution of the methods and devices used before modern day birth control; it’s a very intriguing history. In my joy of learning about birth control, I loved this article. Some of the statics that Bromley presented were somewhat comical, such as “in 1932 there were 43 percent more births in families without any employed workers than in families with one or more full-time workers,” (338). In summary, couples who weren’t employed were having more children because they had more free time to get busy. Why couldn’t scientists just state that? Then the statistic that “rich classes who took no preventative measures were as fertile as the women of the poorer classes, colored women included,” (338).  Did white, middle-class and upper-class women really think that working class women were more fertile? Could that be a racist issue? I suspect that white middle and upper-class women thought that because the “working-class” ranked low on the social hierarchy, that couldn’t control themselves, when they really just couldn’t afford or weren’t offered birth control? Besides that Bromley cites that the “chairman of the section on Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Abdominal Surgery, listed birth control as one of the four major problems in gynecology,” (339) but then the committee refused to study about. Why? Was the subject still too taboo to speak of, even at a committee meeting about Gynecology and Obstetrics? Just like last week&amp;#039;s article on Generational Conflicts by Bromley, she writes in a certain way to influence people, this time the doctors and committees who need to make birth control available to everyone, not just to those that can pay for it. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Bromley definitely makes some strong points for the use of birth control.  However I think making birth control available to everyone is easier said than done, especially in the middle of a depression.  How much could legislation do to actually get the lower classes to start using birth control?  Spreading the use of birth control to the lower classes would no doubt cost money, and during this time the government had many other things to put money towards.  - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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Dorothy Dunbar Bromley’s Comments on Birth Control and the Depression were very informative. I had been wondering about child birth during the depression era for a few days now so I was pleased to read this article. As Morgan mentioned, I too realized that unemployed poor families had more time to get it on, hence the increasing birthrate. I find it disillusioning that an issue that is taboo like birth control was at the time, is only publicly considered because it is personally affecting the middle-classes pocket books.  It seemed to me that the dialogue at this time began because the middle-class was getting real sick of paying for all of these new babies. It’s sad but that is just the way it goes with so many issues in politics.  It was also not surprising to read that the legislation forward movement towards birth-control for families affected by the depression was dependent on the doctors forward motion, and vice versa, getting yet another piece of legislation tied up in bureaucratic hell! I agree J Rowley, that it is a challenge to provide birth control to the masses, it take research, time, and most of all money, but it seems to me that the major hold up was the religious opposition.  Bromley’s comments mentioned the Protestant and Catholic opponents of the change in Comstock Laws felt that providing birth control was “synonymous with prostitution”(340). Many of the people who felt this way were themselves legislatures so I think that the issue was wrought with complications and challenges. I wonder how many of the poor families who were having so many children abandoned or gave away their babies…not a cheer thought, just something I have been wondering. –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I also, like Morgan, completely agree that this is an issue that is still debated about today. Granted, our generation seemingly has an easier access to birth control, but even with insurance and information on it it still is pretty ridiculously expensive. On the other hand, if there is a chance that you could get pregnant AGAIN when you are already too poor to feed yourself and your children (even if it is because of circumstances outside of your control) then stop having sex. It seems like a pretty easy sacrifice to make (especially since there are other means of having an intimate relationship with your husband or wife...) when you&amp;#039;re already struggling to survive. It&amp;#039;s stupid. and on page 338 when Bromley quotes &amp;quot;it is evident that a high birth rate during the depression prevailed in families which could least afford, from any point of view, to assume this added responsibility&amp;quot; it makes me only imagine who suffers from the burden of that new responsibilty-- Society as a whole and more importantly that child born into a crappy world where it wont even be able to eat enough to survive. Having a child during the depression when you couldn&amp;#039;t afford it, especially if you knew the risk you were taking by having sex, is selfish. I also am disgusted at the fact that society wouldn&amp;#039;t allow a woman to control whether or not she HAD another child because the officials in society were sooooo afraid about talking about female sexuality, birth control, and the religious implications of a woman controlling her body has. Ultimately though, it is the children born accidentially into this society that suffer more than anyone and eventually end up perpetually on welfare because they had no other options because society wouldn&amp;#039;t allow their mother to practice immoral birth control, and their parents couldn&amp;#039;t refrain from having them. -Ssellers.&lt;br /&gt;
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“couples who weren’t employed were having more children because they had more free time to get busy. Why couldn’t scientists just state that?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;if there is a chance that you could get pregnant AGAIN when you are already too poor to feed yourself and your children ... then stop having sex&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Having a child during the depression when you couldn&amp;#039;t afford it ... is selfish.&amp;quot; &lt;br /&gt;
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I hate to be the one who has to call people out but I am offended ON BEHALF of those struggling working-class Depression-era women whose complicated and difficult lives we&amp;#039;re so flippantly joking about. I think we need to take a step back and put some historic context on these events--the temptation to cast our modern lens about birth control, considering what we know now, on events, personal decisons, and legislation so permanently mired in the past is alluring, but dangerous. Think about what it was like to be one of those women--the desperate women who inspired Margaret Sanger to push for birth control in the first place. Imagine yourself as one of the women we&amp;#039;re talking about this week--married to a husband you may or may not love but whom society is screaming at you that you should, the both of you unemployed, going out every day to try to find work, any work at all, willing to suffer long hours and terrible conditions for a tiny bit of money that you desperately need. You could stand for hours in a breadline, trying not to make eye contact with all the other miserable women around you, or you could go to the welfare office and attempt to reapply again, even though you&amp;#039;ll be denied just like you have all the other times before, but your dignity is one of the only things you have left to your name and you just can&amp;#039;t degrade yourself that far. Not today. So you scrounge for small jobs, anything you can do--cooking, washing, cleaning--with no job security and no legislation to protect you. You take home the pennies you made, which you add to the nickels your husband managed to get, and you have to scrape it all together to buy a very small amount of food, which goes to feed your kids and occasionally you and your husband. How many kids do you have? 3? 4? 5? Too many mouths to feed as it is, and then one month your period is late and you know that you&amp;#039;re pregnant, AGAIN, and you don&amp;#039;t have any money for clothes, food, hospital bills, or anything else a new life requires. So what do you do? What CAN you do? Beg for charity? Write letters to the First Lady that will go unanswered? Get rid of the child you can&amp;#039;t have with a coat hanger? Can you even imagine that? And years later some college student sitting in her class says you should&amp;#039;ve just stopped having sex. That if you hadn&amp;#039;t used all that &amp;quot;free time&amp;quot; to get busy, maybe you wouldn&amp;#039;t be so damn poor? That you should give up the only time you ever feel close to someone else, the only time you feel beautiful or loved? Or, worse, that you should somehow convince your husband not to have sex with you, knowing that there are very few laws that would help you if he chose otherwise against your will? Maybe if you knew any birth control methods that had more than a 5% success rate you could be saved from a bit of that misery. Maybe. There are, of course, the problems of logistics--manufacture and distribution at a dirt-cheap price you could afford--even if the problems of legislation and government blocks are overturned. &lt;br /&gt;
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THIS is why we study history. When we see life the way someone else once did, when we consider others&amp;#039; hardships and are able to empathize with their problems, we learn to get outside of ourselves and our own narrow opinions. If you walk through life with blinders that you&amp;#039;ve constructed for yourself or let others construct for you, you&amp;#039;ll miss so much of the world around you, and we can&amp;#039;t afford that blindness any more than we can afford to forget how these women thought and felt. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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==Margaret Jarman Hagood, The Life Cycle of a White Southern Farm Woman==&lt;br /&gt;
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This section was almost as heart-wrenching for me to read as the letters to the Roosevelt&amp;#039;s. Mollie&amp;#039;s life is something I could not imagine nor do I think endure. She grew up faster than many women due to her growing number of siblings and a mother who was unable to keep up with all of the chores, and let her education go by the wayside to help her parents. I did enjoy that she was able to get away from the farm for awhile and be her own woman, earning what she wanted and turning down potential suitors. Did all young women who made it away from the farm feel the same? And did they all settle for marriages as she did with Jim? I would want to know how the story would of ended had Mollie been allowed to return to work in the factory; how her ideas of family may have changed. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Margaret Jarman Hagood’s piece The Life Cycle of a White Southern Farm Woman was quite interesting and offered a personal glimpse into the transition of from a girl, to a young woman, and finally to a mother. The main character Mollie seems to already fill the role of the mother while her own mother continues to have child after child which takes a toll on her health. Mollie’s observation of her mother’s child rearing experience obviously shaped her own, to the point where she was often stating that she did not want to have children or get married. In the end of course she follows the same path and seems to come to terms with this. Though the narrative of this story was intriguing, it did not delve into the reasons why these women were having so many children. I would venture to say that it was due to a lack of access to birth control for white women in the south. That being said, this piece challenged me to compare the experiences of the women in the Urban North and the Agrarian south.  While women in the South were birthing larger families, women in the North were hoping to decrease their family side. Mollie seems to view a large family as an albatross around her neck when she is a young woman because she has set goals for her life but when she is old she “transferred her efforts to achieving them for her daughter” (161).  I could see how people without children would find this a depressing thought but I think that it is endearing a bit. When viewing Mollie’s situation with a modern eye, or forcing modern ideas onto her life, it is hard to see how this transfer is a beautiful thing but in reality, Mollie’s is doing something amazing, she was, throughout her life self sacrificing.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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Sorry for writing so much, this story really sparked something for me. - Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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==A Mexican-American Childhood during the Depression, Carlotta Silvas Martin==&lt;br /&gt;
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We have read sources that focused on the support of Mexican American communities in the West, but this source is evidence that those communities continued to exist during the Great Depression and even gained strength.  I found Carlotta&amp;#039;s family&amp;#039;s generosity amazing during such a rough time.  Of course her family had a little more security since her father was a miner, but they still did not receive a great deal of money.  They seemed to be thankful that they receieved any money and shared their blessings with the less fortunate.  The Great Depression is often characterized as a depressing, woeful time, and yet Carlotta and some of her fellow community members celebrated holidays with parties and parades, went to the movies and attended plays.  Carlotta is also very involved in community service that raises money and provides entertainment for the community.  While I&amp;#039;m sure the life was very hard for Superior during the Depression, Carlotta looks back on that part of her life in a positive light and remembers the strong, thriving community that existed. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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==Women in a Soup Line (photograph)==&lt;br /&gt;
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This picture surprised me because after reading the other sources, I got the distinct impression that most women were too proud to stand in soup lines and tried their hardest to avoid having to resort to them.  And yet, here is a picture of quite a few women in a soup line happily accepting the charity.  And they didn&amp;#039;t oppose to having a picture taken of them!  Do we just have an overwhelming amount of sources that focus on women who were anti-soup lines, when that wasn&amp;#039;t actually the case?  Or did those women actually stand in soup lines and were too proud to admit it?  Something to consider is the fact that the women in the photo are Mexican Americans while the sources were written by white women.  Perhaps the societal expectations were different for these two groups that would legitamately make white women afraid of being seen accepting charity. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that perhaps the women photographed were of a different mentality than those read in other primary sources we read. These women were Mexican American women, who were probably accustomed to not having the best that society can offer, they were not part of the prototypical white middle class ideal before the Depression. Also, they eithe had to go, or volunteered to go, around the back of the soup kitchen, so maybe they did face the same struggle with accepting cherity as other women we have read (or they were not allowed to go in because they didn&amp;#039;t qualify for aide), but after weighing the option of going hungry or being able to feed their family for the nigt, it cmes down to you do what you have to do to survive. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Like CBrau I found this photograph very odd. From reading Meridel LeSueur’s “Women in Breadlines” I also thought that women were too proud to wait in a soup line. I got the notion that women would feed all of their family before themselves and if they did not have a family that they would starve because they were too timid to wait in line for food. These women don’t seem to timid or scared to be standing waiting for food at all, they’re smiling in fact. Maybe it is because these women are Mexican-American? Like jmarshal states that they are used to not having the best of society and probably have no problem asking for help. I think that we’ve been focusing on the white middle-class women much, who were shaped by their lifestyle before the depression. Before the depression these women were independent and shied away from receiving any help at all, especially from a man (such as pictured here). Mexican –American’s always have had large families, retaining the structure as man being head of the household, surely did not feel this pressure to uphold ideals that she never had and gladly accepted help. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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The caption notes that it was rare to see women on a breadline/soup line during the Depression, which I found strange considering the Orleck article on housewives. However, I googled some pictures, and it seems to be true. Weren’t women doing everything possible to provide for their families? So why not stand in breadlines? Was there some kind of masculine association with it? You’d think standing in a line for handouts would actually be emasculating. Maybe it was because men were expected to provide for their families, and this was just another way to do it. -- Taylor Brann&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_8_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 8 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_8_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-03-11T05:37:14Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, &amp;quot;Generational Conflicts&amp;quot; */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;MAKE SURE TO ADD YOUR COMMENTS UNDER THE RELEVANT AUTHOR/TITLE HEADING (OR TO CREATE A NEW HEADING IF THERE ISN&amp;#039;T ONE YET)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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==Peiss, The Cosmetics Industry==&lt;br /&gt;
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I’ll admit that I never gave cosmetics much thought or even believed that they deserved thought, for that matter. This article is just another reminder of how even seemingly insignificant objects have a lot of historical value because they reflect broader social patterns. Even makeup. In the case of the article, cosmetics reflect the rise of consumer culture and marketing, as well as class and race connotations. These connotations continue to exist today. I’m sure we’ve all looked at a woman wearing a generous amount of makeup and immediately had less than charitable thoughts about her sexual practices and/or economic position. “Slut” and “trailer park trash” may be words that come to mind. And I’m sure we’ve all seen advertisements about ways to use makeup to look more “exotic,” which is just a politically correct way of saying “ethnic.” I think perhaps nowadays “exotic” is often more about being less offensive. In the past, when people were more overtly racist, maybe labeling things “exotic” was a way to recognize some kind of racial envy and provide a means to achieve what was envied without admitting to it. But that’s kind of a psychological can of worms. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I like the essay &amp;quot;Making Faces&amp;quot; by Kath Peiss. Comparing today&amp;#039;s perceptions of cosmetics and beauty to that of the early 20th Century is very interesting. Most women today wear makeup and instead of refraining from using it to appear respectable it is more the norm to use it. Makeup has also been made available to women of almost any class thanks to stores such as Walmart and even dollar stores. The use of makeup is also not associated with prostitutes anymore because most women wear it. It is always interesting to see how beliefs and opinions change over time, compared to non marital sex which can still be debatable, most people agree that wearing makeup today is acceptable. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems rather ironic that cosmetics, long associated with prostitution, would make their move to the mainstream at a time when society appeared so concerned about the moral well-being of women. At the same time though, this was the first era in which women could really claim income of their own; they represented a new market that cosmetics industries and the beauty culture took advantage of, marketing their products as necessities for women. And in a society that feared women may be loosing their femininity to traditionally male pursuits like wage work, voting, and casual relationships, make up became a way of showing that women were still neat and soft and fair, that they were still essentially women, despite the fact that they may have moved beyond the traditional domestic sphere. -Mary Ann &lt;br /&gt;
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Peiss provides a very different approach to the popularization of cosmetics throughout the 19th century. I never thought about it too much before, but it is apparent that the growth of the cosmetics industry is indicative of the growth of the market and society as a whole. Cosmetics not only became reflective of consumer culture (to include mass production and distribution) but aesthetics as well. People, women particularly, became much more concerned with their physical appearance, which led to the use of makeup. This is also reflected through society when women chose to participate in athletic events and sports. And also the use of women in advertising and other public forums. It is also important to recognize that some feelings about cosmetics have not changed. There are still two separate trains of thought: that cosmetics help enhance the femininity of women or that natural beauty is true beauty. These two opinions are still around and prevalent today Also, the forums in which makeup are sold have not changed. Cosmetics are still sold in drugstores, home-sellers like Mary Kay or Avon, and department stores, which tend to carry higher-end products. It took a decent amount of time for cosmetics to be accepted into the perception of being feminine, but since it has been accepted, opinions have not dramatically changed over the last century. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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In the cosmetics article that we read, there is mention of a few “natural” ways to achieve better beauty or a higher level of attractiveness. These actions are “breathing, exercise, diet, and bathing “(345). I understand exercise, diet and bathing, what I do not get is how breathing makes a difference?  How were women breathing and were they breathing? I’m just confused and intrigued by that example. –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I was particularly intrigued by the concept of skin bleaching.  I had heard before about African-American women bleaching their skin in an attempt to appear more white, but I had never heard of white women doing so.  I would be interested to know more about the change from pale skin to tanned skin being the ideal.  -Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the phrase “hope in a jar” (P.360) was interesting because it showed how women depended so much on make up to bring them more importance in the world. They also expected make-up to make life smoother for them, bringing them new opportunities. So many acts, like using make up that were previously looked down upon, were suddenly accepted when society saw that movie stars/high class people would use cosmetics. Society and culture was so easily influenced by outside factors such as movies. I think during this time, cosmetics created a false sense of “the self.&amp;quot; “A woman’s personal success relied on her appearance.” (P.355) What about her abilities, her work ethic, etc? -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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==Mosher Survey, 1892-1913==&lt;br /&gt;
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The Mosher survey was very fascinating. I found it interesting that one of the interviewees in her twenties in the 1890s seemed to have a more conservative view on sexual practices than the woman in her fifties in the 1890s. Number 1 felt there was danger in too much sex for a woman and that it was necessary to men but not women. Number 35 felt that both husbands and wives needed sex and that people became too nervous and twitchy without it. The survey didn’t note where the women were raised or various other features (though I assume they were middle-class at least if they were regular patients), which I think would have been a big influence on their answers. The survey also provided an interesting contrast to Dr. Frederick’s assumptions about women. Had he actually bothered to interview women about their feelings towards sex, which I’m sure he wouldn’t have dared do for sake of propriety, he would have discovered that women also had an interest in sex and could find it just as satisfying as men. Of course, he probably would have tried to explain it away. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It was interesting that the study done on sexual habits of women was able to obtain opinions from women during that time.  It seemed that sex was just not talked about. But after reading the excerpts from the online reading, it was visible in my mind that women were searching for answers to the inter workings of their marriages and needed help. That need to talk came out of the desperation they felt towards preventing their own marriages from falling apart and maintaining their own health and control over their own body.   -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this so interesting! The varied answers of the women showed just how much discourse there was within women at this time.  The women definitely saw intercourse, orgasms, marriage, etc. as very different functions/facets of their lives. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the Mosher survey very interesting. I too agree that it was surprising that the younger women seemed more sexually conservative than the older women, especially the 53 year old. Through this survey you can see the shift from the traditional family to the Companionate marriage. Though respondent number 1 believed that sexual satisfaction was only necessary for the male, most of the other women believed that it was necessary for the female as well.  I wonder how shocking this survey was to these women who were interviewed because it deals with such salacious issues, and reveals that women do have sexual desires which were thought of as immoral in the past. –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Manifestations of Nymphomania, 1907 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved his assessment that, were women as sexually interested as men, the world would be &amp;quot;one vast brothel.&amp;quot;  The history of the sexual repression of women is long, and these beliefs, or ones like them, persist for long after this was written.  It&amp;#039;s amazing to consider that so many people still feel similarly towards homosexuality.  Dr. Frederick likens lesbianism to some weird practice of child molestation, not unlike ways in which those opposed to same sex marriage offer the &amp;#039;slippery slope&amp;#039; argument that allowing gay marriage will lead to marriages between adults and children, or adults and animals. -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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Carlton C. Fredericks, M.D.’s assessment of what he calls “Nymphomania” was absurd. He even goes as far to propose that women who view sex or masturbation as gratifying automatically classify them as perverts. It seems that any sexual expression that he deemed as improper was in some way perverse. It was such a contrast to the Mosher study because Fredericks views a women’s sexual appetite as “insane or mildly insane”(291) where Mosher is finding that many women feel it is necessary to carry on a healthy marriage. It is interesting as well because the Mosher&amp;#039;s study took place at around the same time, the duality between these two school of thought are amazing! –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I would be interested to see about how Dr. Frederick came to some of his conclusions in this piece.  As we have learned in class, in was much more lady-like for a woman to be less interested in sex at the time, so if Dr. Frederick came to these conclusions by talking to female patients, it could be the result of many of them trying to create an more wholesome image of themselves.  This of course would only reinforce the old idea that women did not enjoy sex as much.  -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I love your comparison, Erin!  It seems that Dr. Frederick believes that women that have any sexual interests beyond procreating must be sexually perverted.  Developing and exploring such interests will only lead to an indifference towards men and the desire to molest children with other women.  I feel Frederick was trying to reinforce the idea of a &amp;quot;proper&amp;quot; lady that wasn&amp;#039;t particularly interested in sex, as John mentioned, by making sexuality seem horrible.  And yet, Dr. Frederick&amp;#039;s claims are lacking any kind of clear evidence.  I wonder if more readers believed or didn&amp;#039;t believe what this man wrote.  I laughed at the last line, &amp;quot;the numbers and variations of practices are so various that it would take pages to mention them&amp;quot; (p. 4).  This is probably an exaggeration, yet I could see Dr. Frederick coming up with pages of exaggerated claims just to prove his point. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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If there was one article I read out loud incredulously as I forced my roommate to listen, it was this one. Fredericks gets the Women&amp;#039;s History prize for Official Idiot, and I hope he was recognized as such during his time, although I doubt it. His accusations are not only wildly speculative and libelous, but also unfounded and unsupported by neutral documentation. Even if you took out the ridiculous subject material, his disturbing lack of evidence and wild examples would make for an extremely weak argument.  --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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== Carrie Chapman Catt’s address to the LWV ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Carrie Chapman Catt’s address to the LWV seems to be a call for women to keep fighting and to try to position themselves on the inside of politics as opposed to from the outside. She states that it has been a battle for 60 years to get the right to vote, and argues that it isnt the time to stop. She says on page 121, “Are we going to petition them [the political parties] as we have always done? Well, if so, what was the use of getting the vote?” and, “the only way to get things in this country is to find them on the inside of the political party.”&lt;br /&gt;
I think Catt is pretty level headed, though she may be underestimating the difficulty women will have getting into positions of power. She seems to understand that just because women gained the right to vote does not mean that the country’s biases dissolved overnight. She believes that it will be a slow change, but women must work from the inside to make that change happen. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I disagree with the implication of Catt&amp;#039;s undersestimation of the difficuluty of women to get into postiions of power; I think she knew full and well that the fight for Women was nowhere near over (it&amp;#039;s still being fought today even). For example, on page 122 she states &amp;quot;Women must persuade men to respect and have conidence in the capacities of women just as we have been doing for 60 odd years; and on the other hand, they must stimulate other women to forward movement and encourage them to increased self respect. This is the same old struggle, but in a new field. Because women have the vote, it doesn&amp;#039;t follow that every man... has suddenly become convinced that women can do things as well as men&amp;quot;. I think she fully understood that men were, and always had been, afraid of powerful women and that the right to vote for women may have been an attempt to a means of appeasement for the women so that they would shut up and retain their place in society happy that they had the meaningless vote. -Ssellers.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with this statement. I also believe that Catt knew what was in front of her as well as why women were given the right to vote in the first place. She mentioned that it was a tactical reason that persuaded men to give women the vote (121) and that many would need to be convinced that women were capable of performing the same tasks as men (122). The way she choses her words makes it seem that she knew that men were only consenting to allow the suffrage amendment to pass so that women would quiet down, which is why she pushes women to want to get involved in politics in order to bring about more change. –jmarshal &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with SSellers here. I think Catt (at least in reference to this speech) seems like she was full aware of the hardships involved for the new generation of women.  &amp;quot;You won&amp;#039;t be so welcome there, but that is the place to be,&amp;quot; (page 122), she says in regards to women being on the inside.  I do like that she called to the younger women to come forth to wage this battle, seeing as how she was a leader in the suffrage movement and 60 years old at this point. She probably felt she had done her part in the fighting for the right to vote, and now it was the next generations turn to put that vote to good use. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with the previous comments and I also think its important to note that Catt is proud of their accomplishments, but also makes it clear that not much has really changed. On page 122 she says &amp;quot;this is the same old struggle but in a new field.&amp;quot; She new that just because women had the right to vote didn&amp;#039;t mean that things were going to necessarily change. She knew that men could make it very hard for women to have political power unless they were persuaded that women could handle it. Essentially, Catt is saying that the right to vote is really just a chance for women to prove that they can handle the same responsibility as men and that she hopes all of those women who fought so hard to vote are still up to the challenge because its not even close to being over. -Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Catt was fully aware of the struggles facing future generations in the fight for equal rights.  The passage of the 19th Amendment, according to Catt’s reasoning, was just the first step in a long process.  Further, she thought that to succeed women would have to approach change from the inside and the right to vote was just a foot in the door, so to speak.  EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I concur (big word) with EFritz with the acknowledgement that Catt was fully aware of the impending struggles of women. She recognizes the difficulties women will now face as voters. Though they have the right to vote, it does not inherently mean that everything else they desired, namely equality with men, will be achieved. Though suffrage was obtained it does not bring about total reconstruction in societal norms, which have been in place for centuries. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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== Debate of the Equal Rights Amendment ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I can understand both perspectives in this debate, but can only beleive the perspective of the women who were in favor of an equal rights amendment.  Women just obtained the right to vote but, are not complete as a gender, until they are viewed as equal to men in society.  To me, the right to vote cannot truly come into effect until women are viewed equally as men.  Men still do not take their political views very seriously and simply giving women the right to vote will not change this opinion.  Hamilton says that the goal for all feminists is the same, and based on what we have learned so far, this is obviously not true.  She is referring to traditional feminism, which has its roots with white middle class women.  She claims an equal rights amendment will make things more complicated, but in my opinion, things will be much easier and obviously women would be able to accomplish more.-afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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When reading each side of the Debate of the Equal Rights Amendment I tried to choose which side I found more convincing. I found that I took the side of the Doris Stevens of the National Women’s Party. The argument is quite simple, women and men don’t live under equal protection of the law, and the laws that exist still reflect old English Common Law. The Equal Rights Amendment would remove all legal discriminations against women on account of sex (Stevens goes on to list all the rights/protections women would gain). What I liked about Stevens argument is that she states that women should have the right to do what they want. Just because they have equal rights to inheritance does not mean that they can’t give it to their brother, or son, or whoever. Women don’t have to hold positions of power if they don’t want to. They should just have the ability to do so if they so choose. &lt;br /&gt;
Alice Hamilton, on the other hand, seems to have tunnel vision. She is solely focused on working women. I agree that women should be protected, but she does not seem to understand the reasons why working women fail to unionize, nor does she look at the negative impacts of protective legislation on working women. She does not seem to focus on any of the other things women would gain out of the Equal Rights Amendment. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Alice Hamilton emphasizes protective legislation because she comes into the picture with the idea that women are naturally different than men though this does not take away from their abilities to perform work.  She talked about how men have already achieved strong labor unions and women have not yet achieved theirs and need the chance to grow.  She had already separated the male and female arenas.  The expectations of society for a woman to fulfill those “ideal” roles (even though not realistic for the working class) makes it hard for women who have families that are working long hours with low wages.  What time is left for children, husband, and home?  It was interesting that the National Women’s Party wants to get rid of this legislation.  I think that Doris Stevens makes a good point when she emphasizes choice.  Women have worked hard and organized as “self-governing units of society” and by getting rid of protective legislation it omit’s that difference.  It will govern laws that allow men and women to be able to make the choice based on decisiveness and preference as an entity not by gender.  They both have their strong points but with different perspectives. -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I am actually quite surprised that Alice Hamilton and so many others are against the Equal Rights Amendment considering how much they could potentially gain from it.  –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I do see both sides. While some women are all WOOHOO WE CAN VOTE WE&amp;#039;RE EQUAL!! Others didn&amp;#039;t quite that stance. It&amp;#039;s important to remember that many women approved of women&amp;#039;s suffrage soley on the basis they wanted to fix things within the domestic realm, i.e. they wanted women to still be outside the public arena because men and women were NOT equal. Those were the women pushing for protective legislation, they believed women still needed protection under the law. However, I think those women pushing for the equal rights amendment had the right idea. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that Alice Paul stated that “the goal of all feminists is the same” (125), and I assume she meant only white, middle class women when she said “all”, because as we have read, not all women had necessarily the same goals when pushing for suffrage. There were different motivations behind each demographics’s desire for women suffrage; not only where the motivations different, but the means of communicating these desires were also vastly different.  She then introduces the idea of following in Holland’s footsteps for equality among the sexes, and I would like to know where she got that information? Had she traveled to Holland and seen it first hand? It’s not central to the article, however it would be more compelling if she had seen this practice in action and was not repeating something that was not verified.  ---jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Of the two arguments that Alice Hamilton and Doris Stevens gave I found Steven’s debate to be more influential than Hamilton’s. Steven’s was very straight forward about what she wanted, especially in listing what the Equal Rights Amendment would achieve for women. The list itself is eye-catching because it isn’t part of a paragraph, a radical move by a radical woman I suppose. I think that Doris is the epitome of what younger women didn’t not want to be like, as Bromley suggest in her article. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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== Joanne Meyerowitz in Unequal Sisters ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This essay discusses the growing sexual and emotional freedom that women were obtaining in the eartly 20th century.  They were able to choose how they wanted to carry themselves sexually in society.  However, to me, this essay was also a great paradox.  Although these women expressed themselves more feely than in the past, they were also severley tied down to men still.  Even in these so-called &amp;quot;furnished-room&amp;quot; districts, there was still sexual oppression and these women were subject to rape, poor conditions and economic dependence.  Although they could conceibably choose their different sex partners, they were also very dependent on these men for their business.  They need to break away from these districts in order to be truly sexually liberated.  Many downplayed these factors, but in order for women to liberated, these constraints must be lifted.-afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the essay by Joanne Meyerowitz in Unequal Sisters about the furnished-room districts was very interesting. In particular, the different types of relationships women had including &amp;quot;dating,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;pickups,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;occasional prostitution&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;temporary alliances&amp;quot; stood out to me. I didn&amp;#039;t know they actually labeled these kind of relationships, dating and sexual activities so specifically. Meyerowitz also explains on page 331 that there were mixed opinions of whether these kinds of practices or &amp;quot;non marital sexual expression&amp;quot; was acceptable. I think the idea of sex outside of marriage is still something people are in debate about today. So, many years later these opinions haven&amp;#039;t really changed.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the notion that &amp;quot;employers paid self-supporting women wages intended for dependent daughters and wives&amp;quot; (pg. 329) is tremendously important in looking at the furnished-room districts. Those who were concerned about the morality of the women living in these districts seemed to largely overlook the fact that many of the women engaging in the relationships deemed scandalous were doing so at least in part out of economic necessity. Maybe they believed paying women a living wage would encourage more women to leave the home in favor of wage work and so further contribute to America&amp;#039;s loss of morality, but in reality if women who could have afforded to support themselves things like &amp;quot;occasional prostitution&amp;quot; probably would not have become so rampant among women living on their own. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Amy I found this whole essay interesting and the way Joanne Meyerowitz describes feminine culture back from the 1830s to the 1960s shows a dramatic shift in the roles women played. I liked how she described the role film played in the changing role of women and how Hollywood banked on the notion, sex sells. On page 334 she discusses the film, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Model:&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Or, Women and Wine&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and in it Marcelle admits she is a &amp;quot;gold digger&amp;quot; which I compare to Kayne West&amp;#039;s song about a woman who is a gold digger. Showing Meyerowitz&amp;#039;s theory that &amp;quot;the sexual behavior of women in turn-of-the-century furnished-room districts is not an isolated episode in women&amp;#039;s history.&amp;quot;(335). -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading &amp;quot;Sexual Geography and Gender Economy,&amp;quot; I was struck by the part of the essay that discussed &amp;quot;going steady&amp;quot; as a supplemental wage. Mary Ann has already discussed occasional prostitution, but I wonder fact if vice investigators were more lenient and accepting of these women than the typical prostitute because they were also involved in &amp;quot;honest&amp;quot; work? I was also intrigued by the fact that the women were so candid about the fact that they were using their feminine wiles to go on these dates, to go to these places because they could not afford to. It seems like it was another job, albeit a more enjoyable, recreational one. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved this articles insinuation that dating was a supplement to poor wages because dates would pay for women to live the life of the rich and famous without actually having to be rich or famous. Basically, the man is at fault for what males complain about today (in paying for things out on dates, or drinks at a bar, or anything they have to spend money on) because he couldn&amp;#039;t just pay the women a living wage so she went and used the weakness of the male sex to her new found sexuality to her advantage. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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This sexual revolution was definitely a big change for women. I think Joanne Meyerowitz&amp;#039;s article does a good job of explaining how the migration to cities created this new type of women. Because women were in these cities working, it created a new atmosphere, one Meyerowitz describes as, &amp;quot;opening possibilities for both sexual experimentation and sexual coercion&amp;quot; (US, 335). This &amp;quot;freedom of urban life&amp;quot; gave women the opportunity to use their bodies for both economic and personal gains. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading Joanne Meyerowitz’s article, especially about the differences in the ways that women used sex as a way of getting ahead. I had never thought of dating as a literal exchange of goods (paid dates for sex), and looking back on it, it very well could be taken that way, and I am surprised I had not heard of or read that view before now. Then the other methods (“picking up”, “occasional prostitution”, and “temporary alliance”) were of varying degrees of this idea. This article really makes it sound almost like a legitimate way to make a living. Perhaps it is because it presents with the idea that women were in control of their relations with these men, not sent out to do someone else’s bidding (introduce pimps and it is a totally different story). –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Today the women described in this article would be a combination of a prostitute and a “sugar-baby” to a “sugar-daddy”.  Like others I found “dating,” “pick-ups,” “occasional prostitution,” and “temporary alliances” (329) as odd names to give to these casual sexual encounters, as if they were nothing at all. I doubt that these women thought anything of it and let it become a way of life though. Instead of going out and finding better jobs or more work, they fell back onto the notion of being a woman could get them what they wanted without the work. “If I did not have a man, I could not get along on my wages.” (330) -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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==Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, &amp;quot;Generational Conflicts&amp;quot;==&lt;br /&gt;
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I imagine that the generation of women who fought for decades to get women the right to vote were crushed to discover that younger women quite casually dismissed many of the ideals they had fought for and even the label they had worn. I understand why the younger women of the 1920s may have felt that they had the world at their feet because they had more opportunities for independence than their mothers had had, but they must have still realized equality was not yet reality. Instead they had convinced themselves that because so many things were different they were inherently better. And it&amp;#039;s interesting to note that the backlash against the word feminist started so long ago. The author&amp;#039;s description of feminists as masculine, angry, and anti-men would easily fit with what many associate with the term feminist today. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Bromley issues a lot of interesting points in this piece that seem to beg the question, what is the point of this feminist- new style?  The part that interested me the most was the seventh tenet.  This discussion on the &amp;quot;Keep your maiden name&amp;quot; slogan points to how ridiculous Bromley viewed some of the common feminist arguments of the 1920&amp;#039;s.  I think her piece is important because of the point Mary Ann stated with her description on women that could/and possibly did influence a lot anti-feminist thinkers today. My question is, these feminist- new style have a profound affect on the women&amp;#039;s movement in the 1920&amp;#039;s and did they handicap some of the progress made post 19th amendment? -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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Feminism.. &amp;quot;For the word suggests either the old school of fighting feminists who wore flat heels amd had very little feminine charm, or the current species who antagonize men with their constant clamor about maiden names, equal rights, woman&amp;#039;s place in the world...&amp;quot; I enjoyed this line... that&amp;#039;s how I viewed feminists coming into this class last semester! - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Mary Ann. I found it interesting how &amp;quot;Feminist-New Style&amp;quot; felt superior to the older women who had enabled them to lead the comfortable, sociable lifestyles they pursued. They felt no gratitude towards these former suffragettes, only contempt. Is this because they felt stronger than them because of their youth, felt more independent because of their economic independence, or just simply thought they were entitled to all of the rights they had? The answer baffles me. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Anna&amp;#039;s question, I think it might have a been a combination of the three. Even today, it is obvious in some cases where youths are ungrateful for what they have been given or the privileges they have been born with. For instance, many Americans view the opportunity to vote as a right, not the privilege it is. The same can be said for the women of this particular era. Simultaneously,  the economic independence that these women were able to benefit from would give them almost a false sense of self. They would not appreciate the labors their mothers had to endure. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I absolutely loved this article because I think it actually represents alot of the ideals that modern women have today. I think it was really progressive for Bromley to talk about women being able to have both a career AND a family, giving equal attention to both. That is the sort of equality that women have been fighting for, the right to be happy. Bromley is saying that women the new woman, if she balances everything correctly, can be very happy. She has the ability to be a professional and still has the ability to be a mom. She doesn&amp;#039;t need to constantly argue that she is as good as a man because she can just simply prove it in her actions. I think its really cool how she sort of brings all the different opinions of what women should be doing together and forms a type of super woman. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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My favorite part of this article, other than the ambition of younger women to have a family and a career (as Angie points out) was the reference to war materials. “With a battle-cry still on their lips…still throwing hand grenades,” (128).  This article was written in 1927 and “The Great War” had only ended ten years earlier. I believe that tensions in the Us may have still been raw and that may be the reason for such a reference. Bromley effectively suggests that the 1st and 2nd generation women as battle-hardened veterans. As veterans I would expect them to cold and judgmental toward those that they had fought against, men. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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While I thought some of the points made by the New Style Feminists were good, I can&amp;#039;t help but feel that their mothers and even grandmothers would be sad to see the flippant way they discussed their struggles and triumphs. They seem to have forgotten that these women fought hard so that they their daughters would not have to. While their argument about creating your own identity instead of fighting to keep your maiden name was valid these new style feminists seemed to have overlooked what was at the core of the feminist movement. It was interesting to see how this article shows the differences between generations. Although the New Style idea of the stereotype of feminism has a cause for angry and embittered women has definitely persevered.--Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==Anxious Mothers Write the Children&amp;#039;s Bureau==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the third letter written by Mrs. A.E.,Minnesota (August 10, 1923) was the most influential in discussing issues of medicine and women&amp;#039;s health. While all three letters are relevant to prenatal and child care and I believe writing them was an excellent way for women to share concerns, the third letter hit home to me. It made me wonder if her trouble with delivery was the start of malpractice in child birth. Along with that did doctors still think it was okay to treat women as subserviant, so if they had a rough delivery ooops...guess that is tough luck for you all (referencing the Bible, Adam and Eve). I also think it was wise to let other women know that doctors such as Dr. B should not be trusted with delivery and on the flip side her doctor in Saint Paul could benefit from these publications. Did these women influence how prenatal care is treated today? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that the third letter was the most influential in this three letter piece, but it was the second letter; however that really captured my attention.  This letter showed me just how little women knew about being pregnant and some of the concerns they had.  It revealed the lack of knowledge on food cravings that women know today as a normal thing when dealing with pregnancy.  Overall, I think all these letters showed women&amp;#039;s desperation when it came to womanhood and the changing societal pressures facing women of that time (to have children and take on the sole responsibility for both the home and family).  They revealed how women were craving more information about their bodies, more specifically, how to manage pregnancy in an age where doctors were inaccessible and/or were engaging in malpractice.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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The anxious mothers were certainly anxious, but who could blame them with a high “maternal and infant” (130) mortality rate.  Like the others who have posted I was quite intrigued by both mother number 2 and number 3. The second mother had, what seemed to me, laughable concerns. I have to remember that women were generally clueless about prenatal care at this point, so I could understand that if you crave something so intensely denying yourself would seem detrimental to the baby, but I was unclear as to why touching your face had anything to do with this. The third mother expressed the most valid concerns of the three. The shear idea of justice in a medical malpractice suit must have seemed so far-fetched at the time, considering that medical malpractices suits are hard to prove today! As the third mother recounted, many of the doctors who claimed to be experts, did not provide adequate care to these mothers in both the pre and post natal area.  The third mothers call for government regulation of hospital practices must have been quite revolutionary at the time, given the fact that many professionals such as doctors were trusted almost blindly. –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the first letter was interesting because Mrs. W. M. wants pamphlets from the Childrens Bureau for her new pregnancy despite already having three boys.  I was curious as to why such a woman would be interested in this information since she has already experienced pregnancy, birth and raising children.  Her eagerness for new information makes it clear that despite any preexisting knowledge, there were women that were curious and very interested in the Bureau&amp;#039;s pamphlets.  Beforehand, pregnancy had either been a private topic or restricted to local women.  This is evident in the second letter, where Mrs. A. E.  is clearly experiencing cravings, but has no idea what is going on.  Since she wants the Bureau to read and respond to her letter confidentially, I would assume she had not discussed her cravings with other women.  Despite a majority of women experiencing pregnancy, I think that the letters show just how few women went around talking about and sharing their experiences like pregnant women do today.  Thus, I believe that some women saw the Bureau as a place to publicly discuss and share their issues, such as the malpractice that the woman in the third letter experiences. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that the first letter was interesting, although I understood how the woman would feel some sense of relief in having written information on hand during pregnancy and after.  I had four kids in five years and I still referred to my “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book with each one.  I wasn’t aware that the federal government had provided this material to women back then; I think it was a fantastic program.  It was also enlightening to read the second letter in which the woman was concerned that she was &amp;#039;marking&amp;#039; the baby by her cravings.  I wonder if this stems from the fact that birthmarks were often referred to as strawberry marks and that this is what the neighbor was referring to.  In both of these letters, these women were seeking information about pregnancy and childbirth at a time when being seen by a physician was not a common occurrance and most of their knowledge was instead from other women in their social groups. EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article shocking, even mildly sad. The desperation of these women to obtain information about their bodies and pregnancy is a stark contrast to today, when all you have to do is log onto the internet to answer any and every question. What is even worse is that I&amp;#039;m sure the postal system did not operate very quickly back then, leaving the women waiting weeks for an answer from the Children&amp;#039;s Bureau. However, I liked that the government finally took an interest in women&amp;#039;s concerns and created this branch. It clearly was of service to many women of very diverse backgrounds.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this article was really interesting and it was nice to see that the government was giving attention to an area that was obviously in need of federal aid or even just attention. I think sometimes we take for granted how the improvements in modern medicine and healthcare overall have made childbirth significantly safer for women. I was sad to see that the program ended in 1929. Judging by these letters the Bureau was important and helpful to a lot of women. --Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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== Excerpt from &amp;quot;Passing&amp;quot; by Nella Larsen ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I remember reading this scene from &amp;quot;Passing&amp;quot; back when my high school class covered the novel, and I was very intrigued by the notion of passing and the possible reasons for it. The story Clare gives for her own experience in passing in this section seems to be one of convenience and opportunity (raised by white aunts that did not advertise her background), deception (she manipulates her husband to run away with her before her aunts could reveal she was black), and a lot of yearning (she seems to resent her aunt&amp;#039;s treatment of her and other white people, which makes her passing as a white person ironic).     --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Sarah about how intriguing this passage was. After reading this excerpt, I think that Nella Larsen&amp;#039;s topic was something that had crossed the minds of many African Americans at the time. The idea of &amp;quot;passing&amp;quot; into another life, just to experience the other side, was something that I&amp;#039;m sure, African American men and women all had imagined at some point.  It was sad though, how Clare had to hide her race, at the request of her aunts. It was interesting to me that although she lived with her aunts, she was still expected to &amp;quot;doing all the housework, and most of the washing.&amp;quot; (P. 140) In the story, Clare even says that she had &amp;quot;Negro blood&amp;quot; and apparently that is why she did all the housework, and it was almost expected of her because of her race. The Harlem Renaissance gave Nella Larsen a way to voice this imaginative idea, to maybe give the rest of the world the idea that African Americans merely wanted to be like everyone else, and she portrayed this by showing how important &amp;quot;passing&amp;quot; was for Clare. -- Alex M.&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
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		<title>328 2010--Week 8 Questions/Comments</title>
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		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Anxious Mothers Write the Children&amp;#039;s Bureau */&lt;/p&gt;
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==Peiss, The Cosmetics Industry==&lt;br /&gt;
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I’ll admit that I never gave cosmetics much thought or even believed that they deserved thought, for that matter. This article is just another reminder of how even seemingly insignificant objects have a lot of historical value because they reflect broader social patterns. Even makeup. In the case of the article, cosmetics reflect the rise of consumer culture and marketing, as well as class and race connotations. These connotations continue to exist today. I’m sure we’ve all looked at a woman wearing a generous amount of makeup and immediately had less than charitable thoughts about her sexual practices and/or economic position. “Slut” and “trailer park trash” may be words that come to mind. And I’m sure we’ve all seen advertisements about ways to use makeup to look more “exotic,” which is just a politically correct way of saying “ethnic.” I think perhaps nowadays “exotic” is often more about being less offensive. In the past, when people were more overtly racist, maybe labeling things “exotic” was a way to recognize some kind of racial envy and provide a means to achieve what was envied without admitting to it. But that’s kind of a psychological can of worms. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I like the essay &amp;quot;Making Faces&amp;quot; by Kath Peiss. Comparing today&amp;#039;s perceptions of cosmetics and beauty to that of the early 20th Century is very interesting. Most women today wear makeup and instead of refraining from using it to appear respectable it is more the norm to use it. Makeup has also been made available to women of almost any class thanks to stores such as Walmart and even dollar stores. The use of makeup is also not associated with prostitutes anymore because most women wear it. It is always interesting to see how beliefs and opinions change over time, compared to non marital sex which can still be debatable, most people agree that wearing makeup today is acceptable. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems rather ironic that cosmetics, long associated with prostitution, would make their move to the mainstream at a time when society appeared so concerned about the moral well-being of women. At the same time though, this was the first era in which women could really claim income of their own; they represented a new market that cosmetics industries and the beauty culture took advantage of, marketing their products as necessities for women. And in a society that feared women may be loosing their femininity to traditionally male pursuits like wage work, voting, and casual relationships, make up became a way of showing that women were still neat and soft and fair, that they were still essentially women, despite the fact that they may have moved beyond the traditional domestic sphere. -Mary Ann &lt;br /&gt;
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Peiss provides a very different approach to the popularization of cosmetics throughout the 19th century. I never thought about it too much before, but it is apparent that the growth of the cosmetics industry is indicative of the growth of the market and society as a whole. Cosmetics not only became reflective of consumer culture (to include mass production and distribution) but aesthetics as well. People, women particularly, became much more concerned with their physical appearance, which led to the use of makeup. This is also reflected through society when women chose to participate in athletic events and sports. And also the use of women in advertising and other public forums. It is also important to recognize that some feelings about cosmetics have not changed. There are still two separate trains of thought: that cosmetics help enhance the femininity of women or that natural beauty is true beauty. These two opinions are still around and prevalent today Also, the forums in which makeup are sold have not changed. Cosmetics are still sold in drugstores, home-sellers like Mary Kay or Avon, and department stores, which tend to carry higher-end products. It took a decent amount of time for cosmetics to be accepted into the perception of being feminine, but since it has been accepted, opinions have not dramatically changed over the last century. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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In the cosmetics article that we read, there is mention of a few “natural” ways to achieve better beauty or a higher level of attractiveness. These actions are “breathing, exercise, diet, and bathing “(345). I understand exercise, diet and bathing, what I do not get is how breathing makes a difference?  How were women breathing and were they breathing? I’m just confused and intrigued by that example. –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I was particularly intrigued by the concept of skin bleaching.  I had heard before about African-American women bleaching their skin in an attempt to appear more white, but I had never heard of white women doing so.  I would be interested to know more about the change from pale skin to tanned skin being the ideal.  -Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the phrase “hope in a jar” (P.360) was interesting because it showed how women depended so much on make up to bring them more importance in the world. They also expected make-up to make life smoother for them, bringing them new opportunities. So many acts, like using make up that were previously looked down upon, were suddenly accepted when society saw that movie stars/high class people would use cosmetics. Society and culture was so easily influenced by outside factors such as movies. I think during this time, cosmetics created a false sense of “the self.&amp;quot; “A woman’s personal success relied on her appearance.” (P.355) What about her abilities, her work ethic, etc? -- Alex M.&lt;br /&gt;
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==Mosher Survey, 1892-1913==&lt;br /&gt;
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The Mosher survey was very fascinating. I found it interesting that one of the interviewees in her twenties in the 1890s seemed to have a more conservative view on sexual practices than the woman in her fifties in the 1890s. Number 1 felt there was danger in too much sex for a woman and that it was necessary to men but not women. Number 35 felt that both husbands and wives needed sex and that people became too nervous and twitchy without it. The survey didn’t note where the women were raised or various other features (though I assume they were middle-class at least if they were regular patients), which I think would have been a big influence on their answers. The survey also provided an interesting contrast to Dr. Frederick’s assumptions about women. Had he actually bothered to interview women about their feelings towards sex, which I’m sure he wouldn’t have dared do for sake of propriety, he would have discovered that women also had an interest in sex and could find it just as satisfying as men. Of course, he probably would have tried to explain it away. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It was interesting that the study done on sexual habits of women was able to obtain opinions from women during that time.  It seemed that sex was just not talked about. But after reading the excerpts from the online reading, it was visible in my mind that women were searching for answers to the inter workings of their marriages and needed help. That need to talk came out of the desperation they felt towards preventing their own marriages from falling apart and maintaining their own health and control over their own body.   -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this so interesting! The varied answers of the women showed just how much discourse there was within women at this time.  The women definitely saw intercourse, orgasms, marriage, etc. as very different functions/facets of their lives. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the Mosher survey very interesting. I too agree that it was surprising that the younger women seemed more sexually conservative than the older women, especially the 53 year old. Through this survey you can see the shift from the traditional family to the Companionate marriage. Though respondent number 1 believed that sexual satisfaction was only necessary for the male, most of the other women believed that it was necessary for the female as well.  I wonder how shocking this survey was to these women who were interviewed because it deals with such salacious issues, and reveals that women do have sexual desires which were thought of as immoral in the past. –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Manifestations of Nymphomania, 1907 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved his assessment that, were women as sexually interested as men, the world would be &amp;quot;one vast brothel.&amp;quot;  The history of the sexual repression of women is long, and these beliefs, or ones like them, persist for long after this was written.  It&amp;#039;s amazing to consider that so many people still feel similarly towards homosexuality.  Dr. Frederick likens lesbianism to some weird practice of child molestation, not unlike ways in which those opposed to same sex marriage offer the &amp;#039;slippery slope&amp;#039; argument that allowing gay marriage will lead to marriages between adults and children, or adults and animals. -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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Carlton C. Fredericks, M.D.’s assessment of what he calls “Nymphomania” was absurd. He even goes as far to propose that women who view sex or masturbation as gratifying automatically classify them as perverts. It seems that any sexual expression that he deemed as improper was in some way perverse. It was such a contrast to the Mosher study because Fredericks views a women’s sexual appetite as “insane or mildly insane”(291) where Mosher is finding that many women feel it is necessary to carry on a healthy marriage. It is interesting as well because the Mosher&amp;#039;s study took place at around the same time, the duality between these two school of thought are amazing! –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I would be interested to see about how Dr. Frederick came to some of his conclusions in this piece.  As we have learned in class, in was much more lady-like for a woman to be less interested in sex at the time, so if Dr. Frederick came to these conclusions by talking to female patients, it could be the result of many of them trying to create an more wholesome image of themselves.  This of course would only reinforce the old idea that women did not enjoy sex as much.  -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I love your comparison, Erin!  It seems that Dr. Frederick believes that women that have any sexual interests beyond procreating must be sexually perverted.  Developing and exploring such interests will only lead to an indifference towards men and the desire to molest children with other women.  I feel Frederick was trying to reinforce the idea of a &amp;quot;proper&amp;quot; lady that wasn&amp;#039;t particularly interested in sex, as John mentioned, by making sexuality seem horrible.  And yet, Dr. Frederick&amp;#039;s claims are lacking any kind of clear evidence.  I wonder if more readers believed or didn&amp;#039;t believe what this man wrote.  I laughed at the last line, &amp;quot;the numbers and variations of practices are so various that it would take pages to mention them&amp;quot; (p. 4).  This is probably an exaggeration, yet I could see Dr. Frederick coming up with pages of exaggerated claims just to prove his point. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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== Carrie Chapman Catt’s address to the LWV ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Carrie Chapman Catt’s address to the LWV seems to be a call for women to keep fighting and to try to position themselves on the inside of politics as opposed to from the outside. She states that it has been a battle for 60 years to get the right to vote, and argues that it isnt the time to stop. She says on page 121, “Are we going to petition them [the political parties] as we have always done? Well, if so, what was the use of getting the vote?” and, “the only way to get things in this country is to find them on the inside of the political party.”&lt;br /&gt;
I think Catt is pretty level headed, though she may be underestimating the difficulty women will have getting into positions of power. She seems to understand that just because women gained the right to vote does not mean that the country’s biases dissolved overnight. She believes that it will be a slow change, but women must work from the inside to make that change happen. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I disagree with the implication of Catt&amp;#039;s undersestimation of the difficuluty of women to get into postiions of power; I think she knew full and well that the fight for Women was nowhere near over (it&amp;#039;s still being fought today even). For example, on page 122 she states &amp;quot;Women must persuade men to respect and have conidence in the capacities of women just as we have been doing for 60 odd years; and on the other hand, they must stimulate other women to forward movement and encourage them to increased self respect. This is the same old struggle, but in a new field. Because women have the vote, it doesn&amp;#039;t follow that every man... has suddenly become convinced that women can do things as well as men&amp;quot;. I think she fully understood that men were, and always had been, afraid of powerful women and that the right to vote for women may have been an attempt to a means of appeasement for the women so that they would shut up and retain their place in society happy that they had the meaningless vote. -Ssellers.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with this statement. I also believe that Catt knew what was in front of her as well as why women were given the right to vote in the first place. She mentioned that it was a tactical reason that persuaded men to give women the vote (121) and that many would need to be convinced that women were capable of performing the same tasks as men (122). The way she choses her words makes it seem that she knew that men were only consenting to allow the suffrage amendment to pass so that women would quiet down, which is why she pushes women to want to get involved in politics in order to bring about more change. –jmarshal &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with SSellers here. I think Catt (at least in reference to this speech) seems like she was full aware of the hardships involved for the new generation of women.  &amp;quot;You won&amp;#039;t be so welcome there, but that is the place to be,&amp;quot; (page 122), she says in regards to women being on the inside.  I do like that she called to the younger women to come forth to wage this battle, seeing as how she was a leader in the suffrage movement and 60 years old at this point. She probably felt she had done her part in the fighting for the right to vote, and now it was the next generations turn to put that vote to good use. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with the previous comments and I also think its important to note that Catt is proud of their accomplishments, but also makes it clear that not much has really changed. On page 122 she says &amp;quot;this is the same old struggle but in a new field.&amp;quot; She new that just because women had the right to vote didn&amp;#039;t mean that things were going to necessarily change. She knew that men could make it very hard for women to have political power unless they were persuaded that women could handle it. Essentially, Catt is saying that the right to vote is really just a chance for women to prove that they can handle the same responsibility as men and that she hopes all of those women who fought so hard to vote are still up to the challenge because its not even close to being over. -Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Catt was fully aware of the struggles facing future generations in the fight for equal rights.  The passage of the 19th Amendment, according to Catt’s reasoning, was just the first step in a long process.  Further, she thought that to succeed women would have to approach change from the inside and the right to vote was just a foot in the door, so to speak.  EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I concur (big word) with EFritz with the acknowledgement that Catt was fully aware of the impending struggles of women. She recognizes the difficulties women will now face as voters. Though they have the right to vote, it does not inherently mean that everything else they desired, namely equality with men, will be achieved. Though suffrage was obtained it does not bring about total reconstruction in societal norms, which have been in place for centuries. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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== Debate of the Equal Rights Amendment ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I can understand both perspectives in this debate, but can only beleive the perspective of the women who were in favor of an equal rights amendment.  Women just obtained the right to vote but, are not complete as a gender, until they are viewed as equal to men in society.  To me, the right to vote cannot truly come into effect until women are viewed equally as men.  Men still do not take their political views very seriously and simply giving women the right to vote will not change this opinion.  Hamilton says that the goal for all feminists is the same, and based on what we have learned so far, this is obviously not true.  She is referring to traditional feminism, which has its roots with white middle class women.  She claims an equal rights amendment will make things more complicated, but in my opinion, things will be much easier and obviously women would be able to accomplish more.-afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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When reading each side of the Debate of the Equal Rights Amendment I tried to choose which side I found more convincing. I found that I took the side of the Doris Stevens of the National Women’s Party. The argument is quite simple, women and men don’t live under equal protection of the law, and the laws that exist still reflect old English Common Law. The Equal Rights Amendment would remove all legal discriminations against women on account of sex (Stevens goes on to list all the rights/protections women would gain). What I liked about Stevens argument is that she states that women should have the right to do what they want. Just because they have equal rights to inheritance does not mean that they can’t give it to their brother, or son, or whoever. Women don’t have to hold positions of power if they don’t want to. They should just have the ability to do so if they so choose. &lt;br /&gt;
Alice Hamilton, on the other hand, seems to have tunnel vision. She is solely focused on working women. I agree that women should be protected, but she does not seem to understand the reasons why working women fail to unionize, nor does she look at the negative impacts of protective legislation on working women. She does not seem to focus on any of the other things women would gain out of the Equal Rights Amendment. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Alice Hamilton emphasizes protective legislation because she comes into the picture with the idea that women are naturally different than men though this does not take away from their abilities to perform work.  She talked about how men have already achieved strong labor unions and women have not yet achieved theirs and need the chance to grow.  She had already separated the male and female arenas.  The expectations of society for a woman to fulfill those “ideal” roles (even though not realistic for the working class) makes it hard for women who have families that are working long hours with low wages.  What time is left for children, husband, and home?  It was interesting that the National Women’s Party wants to get rid of this legislation.  I think that Doris Stevens makes a good point when she emphasizes choice.  Women have worked hard and organized as “self-governing units of society” and by getting rid of protective legislation it omit’s that difference.  It will govern laws that allow men and women to be able to make the choice based on decisiveness and preference as an entity not by gender.  They both have their strong points but with different perspectives. -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I am actually quite surprised that Alice Hamilton and so many others are against the Equal Rights Amendment considering how much they could potentially gain from it.  –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I do see both sides. While some women are all WOOHOO WE CAN VOTE WE&amp;#039;RE EQUAL!! Others didn&amp;#039;t quite that stance. It&amp;#039;s important to remember that many women approved of women&amp;#039;s suffrage soley on the basis they wanted to fix things within the domestic realm, i.e. they wanted women to still be outside the public arena because men and women were NOT equal. Those were the women pushing for protective legislation, they believed women still needed protection under the law. However, I think those women pushing for the equal rights amendment had the right idea. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that Alice Paul stated that “the goal of all feminists is the same” (125), and I assume she meant only white, middle class women when she said “all”, because as we have read, not all women had necessarily the same goals when pushing for suffrage. There were different motivations behind each demographics’s desire for women suffrage; not only where the motivations different, but the means of communicating these desires were also vastly different.  She then introduces the idea of following in Holland’s footsteps for equality among the sexes, and I would like to know where she got that information? Had she traveled to Holland and seen it first hand? It’s not central to the article, however it would be more compelling if she had seen this practice in action and was not repeating something that was not verified.  ---jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Of the two arguments that Alice Hamilton and Doris Stevens gave I found Steven’s debate to be more influential than Hamilton’s. Steven’s was very straight forward about what she wanted, especially in listing what the Equal Rights Amendment would achieve for women. The list itself is eye-catching because it isn’t part of a paragraph, a radical move by a radical woman I suppose. I think that Doris is the epitome of what younger women didn’t not want to be like, as Bromley suggest in her article. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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== Joanne Meyerowitz in Unequal Sisters ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This essay discusses the growing sexual and emotional freedom that women were obtaining in the eartly 20th century.  They were able to choose how they wanted to carry themselves sexually in society.  However, to me, this essay was also a great paradox.  Although these women expressed themselves more feely than in the past, they were also severley tied down to men still.  Even in these so-called &amp;quot;furnished-room&amp;quot; districts, there was still sexual oppression and these women were subject to rape, poor conditions and economic dependence.  Although they could conceibably choose their different sex partners, they were also very dependent on these men for their business.  They need to break away from these districts in order to be truly sexually liberated.  Many downplayed these factors, but in order for women to liberated, these constraints must be lifted.-afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the essay by Joanne Meyerowitz in Unequal Sisters about the furnished-room districts was very interesting. In particular, the different types of relationships women had including &amp;quot;dating,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;pickups,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;occasional prostitution&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;temporary alliances&amp;quot; stood out to me. I didn&amp;#039;t know they actually labeled these kind of relationships, dating and sexual activities so specifically. Meyerowitz also explains on page 331 that there were mixed opinions of whether these kinds of practices or &amp;quot;non marital sexual expression&amp;quot; was acceptable. I think the idea of sex outside of marriage is still something people are in debate about today. So, many years later these opinions haven&amp;#039;t really changed.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the notion that &amp;quot;employers paid self-supporting women wages intended for dependent daughters and wives&amp;quot; (pg. 329) is tremendously important in looking at the furnished-room districts. Those who were concerned about the morality of the women living in these districts seemed to largely overlook the fact that many of the women engaging in the relationships deemed scandalous were doing so at least in part out of economic necessity. Maybe they believed paying women a living wage would encourage more women to leave the home in favor of wage work and so further contribute to America&amp;#039;s loss of morality, but in reality if women who could have afforded to support themselves things like &amp;quot;occasional prostitution&amp;quot; probably would not have become so rampant among women living on their own. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Amy I found this whole essay interesting and the way Joanne Meyerowitz describes feminine culture back from the 1830s to the 1960s shows a dramatic shift in the roles women played. I liked how she described the role film played in the changing role of women and how Hollywood banked on the notion, sex sells. On page 334 she discusses the film, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Model:&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Or, Women and Wine&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and in it Marcelle admits she is a &amp;quot;gold digger&amp;quot; which I compare to Kayne West&amp;#039;s song about a woman who is a gold digger. Showing Meyerowitz&amp;#039;s theory that &amp;quot;the sexual behavior of women in turn-of-the-century furnished-room districts is not an isolated episode in women&amp;#039;s history.&amp;quot;(335). -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading &amp;quot;Sexual Geography and Gender Economy,&amp;quot; I was struck by the part of the essay that discussed &amp;quot;going steady&amp;quot; as a supplemental wage. Mary Ann has already discussed occasional prostitution, but I wonder fact if vice investigators were more lenient and accepting of these women than the typical prostitute because they were also involved in &amp;quot;honest&amp;quot; work? I was also intrigued by the fact that the women were so candid about the fact that they were using their feminine wiles to go on these dates, to go to these places because they could not afford to. It seems like it was another job, albeit a more enjoyable, recreational one. -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved this articles insinuation that dating was a supplement to poor wages because dates would pay for women to live the life of the rich and famous without actually having to be rich or famous. Basically, the man is at fault for what males complain about today (in paying for things out on dates, or drinks at a bar, or anything they have to spend money on) because he couldn&amp;#039;t just pay the women a living wage so she went and used the weakness of the male sex to her new found sexuality to her advantage. -ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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This sexual revolution was definitely a big change for women. I think Joanne Meyerowitz&amp;#039;s article does a good job of explaining how the migration to cities created this new type of women. Because women were in these cities working, it created a new atmosphere, one Meyerowitz describes as, &amp;quot;opening possibilities for both sexual experimentation and sexual coercion&amp;quot; (US, 335). This &amp;quot;freedom of urban life&amp;quot; gave women the opportunity to use their bodies for both economic and personal gains. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading Joanne Meyerowitz’s article, especially about the differences in the ways that women used sex as a way of getting ahead. I had never thought of dating as a literal exchange of goods (paid dates for sex), and looking back on it, it very well could be taken that way, and I am surprised I had not heard of or read that view before now. Then the other methods (“picking up”, “occasional prostitution”, and “temporary alliance”) were of varying degrees of this idea. This article really makes it sound almost like a legitimate way to make a living. Perhaps it is because it presents with the idea that women were in control of their relations with these men, not sent out to do someone else’s bidding (introduce pimps and it is a totally different story). –jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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Today the women described in this article would be a combination of a prostitute and a “sugar-baby” to a “sugar-daddy”.  Like others I found “dating,” “pick-ups,” “occasional prostitution,” and “temporary alliances” (329) as odd names to give to these casual sexual encounters, as if they were nothing at all. I doubt that these women thought anything of it and let it become a way of life though. Instead of going out and finding better jobs or more work, they fell back onto the notion of being a woman could get them what they wanted without the work. “If I did not have a man, I could not get along on my wages.” (330) -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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==Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, &amp;quot;Generational Conflicts&amp;quot;==&lt;br /&gt;
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I imagine that the generation of women who fought for decades to get women the right to vote were crushed to discover that younger women quite casually dismissed many of the ideals they had fought for and even the label they had worn. I understand why the younger women of the 1920s may have felt that they had the world at their feet because they had more opportunities for independence than their mothers had had, but they must have still realized equality was not yet reality. Instead they had convinced themselves that because so many things were different they were inherently better. And it&amp;#039;s interesting to note that the backlash against the word feminist started so long ago. The author&amp;#039;s description of feminists as masculine, angry, and anti-men would easily fit with what many associate with the term feminist today. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Bromley issues a lot of interesting points in this piece that seem to beg the question, what is the point of this feminist- new style?  The part that interested me the most was the seventh tenet.  This discussion on the &amp;quot;Keep your maiden name&amp;quot; slogan points to how ridiculous Bromley viewed some of the common feminist arguments of the 1920&amp;#039;s.  I think her piece is important because of the point Mary Ann stated with her description on women that could/and possibly did influence a lot anti-feminist thinkers today. My question is, these feminist- new style have a profound affect on the women&amp;#039;s movement in the 1920&amp;#039;s and did they handicap some of the progress made post 19th amendment? -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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Feminism.. &amp;quot;For the word suggests either the old school of fighting feminists who wore flat heels amd had very little feminine charm, or the current species who antagonize men with their constant clamor about maiden names, equal rights, woman&amp;#039;s place in the world...&amp;quot; I enjoyed this line... that&amp;#039;s how I viewed feminists coming into this class last semester! - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Mary Ann. I found it interesting how &amp;quot;Feminist-New Style&amp;quot; felt superior to the older women who had enabled them to lead the comfortable, sociable lifestyles they pursued. They felt no gratitude towards these former suffragettes, only contempt. Is this because they felt stronger than them because of their youth, felt more independent because of their economic independence, or just simply thought they were entitled to all of the rights they had? The answer baffles me. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Anna&amp;#039;s question, I think it might have a been a combination of the three. Even today, it is obvious in some cases where youths are ungrateful for what they have been given or the privileges they have been born with. For instance, many Americans view the opportunity to vote as a right, not the privilege it is. The same can be said for the women of this particular era. Simultaneously,  the economic independence that these women were able to benefit from would give them almost a false sense of self. They would not appreciate the labors their mothers had to endure. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I absolutely loved this article because I think it actually represents alot of the ideals that modern women have today. I think it was really progressive for Bromley to talk about women being able to have both a career AND a family, giving equal attention to both. That is the sort of equality that women have been fighting for, the right to be happy. Bromley is saying that women the new woman, if she balances everything correctly, can be very happy. She has the ability to be a professional and still has the ability to be a mom. She doesn&amp;#039;t need to constantly argue that she is as good as a man because she can just simply prove it in her actions. I think its really cool how she sort of brings all the different opinions of what women should be doing together and forms a type of super woman. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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My favorite part of this article, other than the ambition of younger women to have a family and a career (as Angie points out) was the reference to war materials. “With a battle-cry still on their lips…still throwing hand grenades,” (128).  This article was written in 1927 and “The Great War” had only ended ten years earlier. I believe that tensions in the Us may have still been raw and that may be the reason for such a reference. Bromley effectively suggests that the 1st and 2nd generation women as battle-hardened veterans. As veterans I would expect them to cold and judgmental toward those that they had fought against, men. -Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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==Anxious Mothers Write the Children&amp;#039;s Bureau==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the third letter written by Mrs. A.E.,Minnesota (August 10, 1923) was the most influential in discussing issues of medicine and women&amp;#039;s health. While all three letters are relevant to prenatal and child care and I believe writing them was an excellent way for women to share concerns, the third letter hit home to me. It made me wonder if her trouble with delivery was the start of malpractice in child birth. Along with that did doctors still think it was okay to treat women as subserviant, so if they had a rough delivery ooops...guess that is tough luck for you all (referencing the Bible, Adam and Eve). I also think it was wise to let other women know that doctors such as Dr. B should not be trusted with delivery and on the flip side her doctor in Saint Paul could benefit from these publications. Did these women influence how prenatal care is treated today? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that the third letter was the most influential in this three letter piece, but it was the second letter; however that really captured my attention.  This letter showed me just how little women knew about being pregnant and some of the concerns they had.  It revealed the lack of knowledge on food cravings that women know today as a normal thing when dealing with pregnancy.  Overall, I think all these letters showed women&amp;#039;s desperation when it came to womanhood and the changing societal pressures facing women of that time (to have children and take on the sole responsibility for both the home and family).  They revealed how women were craving more information about their bodies, more specifically, how to manage pregnancy in an age where doctors were inaccessible and/or were engaging in malpractice.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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The anxious mothers were certainly anxious, but who could blame them with a high “maternal and infant” (130) mortality rate.  Like the others who have posted I was quite intrigued by both mother number 2 and number 3. The second mother had, what seemed to me, laughable concerns. I have to remember that women were generally clueless about prenatal care at this point, so I could understand that if you crave something so intensely denying yourself would seem detrimental to the baby, but I was unclear as to why touching your face had anything to do with this. The third mother expressed the most valid concerns of the three. The shear idea of justice in a medical malpractice suit must have seemed so far-fetched at the time, considering that medical malpractices suits are hard to prove today! As the third mother recounted, many of the doctors who claimed to be experts, did not provide adequate care to these mothers in both the pre and post natal area.  The third mothers call for government regulation of hospital practices must have been quite revolutionary at the time, given the fact that many professionals such as doctors were trusted almost blindly. –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the first letter was interesting because Mrs. W. M. wants pamphlets from the Childrens Bureau for her new pregnancy despite already having three boys.  I was curious as to why such a woman would be interested in this information since she has already experienced pregnancy, birth and raising children.  Her eagerness for new information makes it clear that despite any preexisting knowledge, there were women that were curious and very interested in the Bureau&amp;#039;s pamphlets.  Beforehand, pregnancy had either been a private topic or restricted to local women.  This is evident in the second letter, where Mrs. A. E.  is clearly experiencing cravings, but has no idea what is going on.  Since she wants the Bureau to read and respond to her letter confidentially, I would assume she had not discussed her cravings with other women.  Despite a majority of women experiencing pregnancy, I think that the letters show just how few women went around talking about and sharing their experiences like pregnant women do today.  Thus, I believe that some women saw the Bureau as a place to publicly discuss and share their issues, such as the malpractice that the woman in the third letter experiences. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that the first letter was interesting, although I understood how the woman would feel some sense of relief in having written information on hand during pregnancy and after.  I had four kids in five years and I still referred to my “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book with each one.  I wasn’t aware that the federal government had provided this material to women back then; I think it was a fantastic program.  It was also enlightening to read the second letter in which the woman was concerned that she was &amp;#039;marking&amp;#039; the baby by her cravings.  I wonder if this stems from the fact that birthmarks were often referred to as strawberry marks and that this is what the neighbor was referring to.  In both of these letters, these women were seeking information about pregnancy and childbirth at a time when being seen by a physician was not a common occurrance and most of their knowledge was instead from other women in their social groups. EFritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article shocking, even mildly sad. The desperation of these women to obtain information about their bodies and pregnancy is a stark contrast to today, when all you have to do is log onto the internet to answer any and every question. What is even worse is that I&amp;#039;m sure the postal system did not operate very quickly back then, leaving the women waiting weeks for an answer from the Children&amp;#039;s Bureau. However, I liked that the government finally took an interest in women&amp;#039;s concerns and created this branch. It clearly was of service to many women of very diverse backgrounds.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this article was really interesting and it was nice to see that the government was giving attention to an area that was obviously in need of federal aid or even just attention. I think sometimes we take for granted how the improvements in modern medicine and healthcare overall have made childbirth significantly safer for women. I was sad to see that the program ended in 1929. Judging by these letters the Bureau was important and helpful to a lot of women. --Emma&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_5_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 5 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_5_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-02-23T00:41:07Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Working Women Write the Jewish Daily Forward */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;NOTE: If the document/essay you want to write about isn&amp;#039;t listed, add it using the following format: == Author, Title, Year ==&lt;br /&gt;
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==Working Women Write the Jewish Daily Forward==&lt;br /&gt;
While this essay was not too long in length I found interesting the early day versions of advice columns in newspapers. Women, specifically Jewish women were able to write about their struggles and stories in search of advice instead of just relying on a diary to record their thoughts. It reminded me of reading American Girl magazine when I was younger and learning about different girls stories and how they expressed any concern with their lives. I found it great that the advice given back to girls, much like today, was for the betterment of women. The advice encouraged women to step forward and have a voice in the workplace and home. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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The Jewish Daily Forward contained some interesting submissions. The first one written by the teenager who was being sexually harassed struck me because this is something that many women endured (and still endure) during the early part of the 20th century. The advice, though correct, causes me to wonder: would anyone do anything about the foreman? It seems like the circumstances surrounding women, especially immigrant women working in shops/factories at this time were pretty bleak. I wish it weren’t so, but I wonder if any action would have been taken against the foreman at all, she explains that this is a small town so maybe that would have any effect but so many of these cases, if they were even reported, went unresolved.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the essays about the Jewish Daily forward and the Chicago Defender both newspapers seemed to be doing as much as they could for the immigrant and black communities. While in some situations they might not have had the power to do anything it seems like they were a comforting presence in both communities. The arrival of the Chicago Defender especially seemed to be looked forward to by many families. However like Caryn I also wondered if it was likely that any action would be taken against the foreman who harassed the young worker. What were the chances that a young girl without any money would be able to make a successful case against a male employer? Also this is not really a post but the letter from the girl who had lost her fiance? husband? in the shirtwaist factory fire was really depressing. Especially her ending line of &amp;quot; I think everything can be all right for me only in the grave&amp;quot;.....I hope she listened to the editor and remarried!--Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Burden of Rural Women&amp;#039;s Lives, 1900-1901 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading the Burdens of Rural Women’s Lives the author states that she learned two things from her life on the farm. First, the work never kills. Second, that work must be calculated beforehand to figure out ways to be more efficient. I think these two things are emphasized throughout her description of her life. Not only did these rural women have to worry about keeping the home, but they also had to work on the farm. The lives of rural women were tough, and I would argue that they as tough if not tougher than urban working class women’s lives because they worked the same, if not longer hours as the working class urban women, but they also had to do household tasks without the appliances that were available in the cities and without electricity. Based off of the author’s description of her life, I think that these two lessons that she is passing on were probably essential in getting by as a rural farm woman. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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These women&amp;#039;s lives totally interest me.  As plainly as she tells her life story, as pertaining to work, you get a real sense of the pride that she felt in being so industrious and in being so good at what she did.  She even mentions the books she read while she used to churn butter.  She was constantly occupied and never (except when she taught before she was married, presumably) for a wage.  But by most measures, she and her husband led very successful lives.  They provided for their five kids and sent them to school, one even to Cornell.  And at 58, it sounds like she even gets to &amp;quot;retire&amp;quot;.  The values of rural living seem very different than those of urban living.  As more and more people moved into urban areas, i wonder how this affected the lifestyles of farm families.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Agnes Nestor, The Story of a Glove Maker ==&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading Burdens of Rural Women’s Lives I thought that the rural farm woman’s life was incredibly difficult and I stated that it was as tough if not tougher than urban working class women’s lives. However, after reading The Story of a Glove Maker I think I changed my mind. Urban working women had to work in factories with irregular pay and irregular hours all they while they were threatened by their male superiors who could fire them at a moments notice. Not only did they have to worry about keeping their jobs, but they had to worry about being sexually exploited. All the while, these women, too, had to worry about keeping their homes.  They also seemed to have fewer opportunities for advancement than the rural farm women.  The farm women worked incredibly hard, but the author of Burdens of Rural Women’s Lives had the ability to be educated and have her children be educated, one of her children was at Cornell University! She also seemed to have a lot to show for her work, while it seems that urban women were working hard just to get by. I don’t know if it is fair to compare and contrast, but these women all had difficult lives. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin on a lot of the points she made.  This piece captured my attention because of the harsh conditions that these women were forced to work in.  I found in particularly difficult to not feel bad for the girls because stress they had to endure by working in industrial places like a glove factory.  Nestor references how the girls tried to find ways to produce more gloves in an hour and would sometimes even work during their breaks just to get more done.  She also revealed how the women were afraid of the machine breaking because it meant they could not make more gloves, which meant they would not get their payment.  Nestor shows the effect of industry on the working woman and it&amp;#039;s effects.  I wonder how women at this time dealt with professions like this without getting extremely frustrated.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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== Fannie Barrier Williams Describes the &amp;quot;Problem of Employment for Negro Women,&amp;quot; 1903 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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As so many black women worked in domestic service and were in contact with whites, Williams preferred to see the elevation of domestic service into respectable work and a recognized profession, believing that it would raise the race in general. But she suggests that there was a tendency to look down on domestic service within the black community, though I think it may not all have been a result of the demeaning nature of the work itself, but rather that the women who worked in domestic service were essentially working for the betterment of white people in a very direct way. Williams wrote, “If our girls work for wages in a nice home, rather than in a factory or over a counter, they are ruthlessly scorned by their friends and acquaintances” (263). For instance, factory work as compared to domestic service also required manual labor, but while it’s products were more to the benefit of whites, it was in a way less obviously so than domestic service. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Williams&amp;#039; views on domestic service to be quite interesting.  For example, she thought that domestic service would eventually become a profession and there would training for it as if it were a normal job.  Obviously domestic service never became a profession and looking back on that thought today, many of us would probably laugh at the idea.  However, for that time period, I don&amp;#039;t think her ideas were too out of place because of the incredibly limited employment opportunities for black women at this time.  Domestic service was one of their few options, therefore I think Williams was almost forced into beleiving this because she didn&amp;#039;t know anything else.  Also, she thought that domestic servants should be looked upon in the same light as women in the working world.  Again, it is tough to agree or disagree because domestic service is all black women really know and therefore they can almost only beleive that there work is equal to that of white women in society. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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On page 264 it says that &amp;quot;the everyday man and woman who make society must change their foolish notions as to what is the polite thing for a young woman to do... my only plea is that we shall protect and respect our girls who honestly and intelligently enter this service, either from preference or necessity&amp;quot; and I find that quote to be loaded with so many things that she has to say. First, I applaud her for realizing that it is not always the role of the woman that needs to change, but societies perception of that role. Then, she also describes how sometimes good, smart people have terrible jobs (college kids waitress-ing???)because of their situation and realization that it would be the best opportunity they could have to get themselves the glory of never having to have to do that terrible work again. I enjoy this quote from the reading in particular because it applies to both races in the lower class and can even still be applied to a lot of things inherently wrong with society today (and she doesn&amp;#039;t sound bitter, rude or condescending in this statement). It also helps her statement that by working these service jobs and highering the status of them, the black race as a whole could race their association with these jobs and in turn their status in life. -SSellers&lt;br /&gt;
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In reading this article I began to question Fannie’s race. I thought maybe Fannie may have been white because she isn’t criticizing every other race and complaining about the work that African American women have. I found it unusual for an African American woman to empower her kind and their jobs instead of criticizing the work and people. Fannie doesn’t seen too upset about African American women only having an opportunity in the domestic service industry, and instead of denouncing the trade all together, she finds that only a few changes need to be made. I really enjoyed the fact that Fannie is empowering her women rather than continuing to remind them of the short-falls they will face in their life and the hardships that come with their color. “Our girls must be made to feel that there is no stepping down when they become professional housekeepers. The relative dignity, respectability, and honor of this profession should be first taught in our schools,” (pg. 264). -Morgan M &lt;br /&gt;
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I had the same question as Morgan while reading this piece and decided to do a little research.  I found out that she was a black woman, with a college education.  I could not find anything about her working as a domestic servant.  Now I wonder who the intended audience of this piece was.  Was it aimed at black domestic servants or other black intellectuals? - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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From this source, I feel that Williams feels that she wishes black people were in demand for other jobs besides domestic work but since they are not they should put their hard work ethics to use and take pride in the job they are given. She thinks that women who are educated shouldn&amp;#039;t necessarily be upset working as a domestic servant but should be thankful to have a job like this. I thought this part was interesting because I know it would be hard for me to think about going to college for 4+ years and then still having to become a domestic servant. I would definitely be a little upset and not want to take pride in the work I was doing especially if the conditions were not so great. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== Harriet Brunkhurst Laments the Home Problems of &amp;quot;Business Girls,&amp;quot; 1910 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;She could earn her own living, but she could not fight her own battles…&amp;quot; (p. 267).  Many of the problems women faced going in to the workforce are quite obvious to us:  low wages, harsh conditions, sexual harassment, etc…  But Harriet Brunkhurst&amp;#039;s article points out a less obvious problem that many girls faced in America - being treated as working women by their families.  Even after working all day, they were still expected to keep up with their chores and responsibilities at home.  Yet boys and men in the same situations were not expected to carry as much responsibility at home and were recognized for the hours they spent working outside the home.  Yet again, there is this difficulty of separating women from the private sphere.  And I think that even today some women are expected to carry more responsibilities within the home, even if they work outside of the home. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree here that a women in the working world can experience added stress when she is at home.  A woman can go to work, but she is still expected to manage the &amp;#039;domestic sphere&amp;#039; when she returns home and this can place a lot of stress on women.  For example, in this excerpt, the girl is expected to work all day, then when she comes home, she gets grief for not helping out with the household chores.  It can be very difficult to balance life in the working world with the home front, and women are often expected to do a lot in both fields. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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This article by far is my favorite this year because I found so many examples in it that are still present in us women today. The notion that we as women, who are independent, still come home to more work while the men of the house are allowed their “rest and relaxation” because they are said to do more. That is so untrue. Why is that women why work a job, attend school, or have any other daunting task that takes up most her of her time, is expected to return home after such a day to the “domestic sphere”  and must continue to maintain it? I find that very unfair and it hits home personally for women in today’s age as well. I feel that today it is just as terrible a situation as it was 100 years ago, if not worse. Because of the many facets of life today, women tend to take on many different tasks in the “public sphere” of life and yet must also maintain the “domestic sphere”. As I’m sure every women has gone through this more than once in her life, all women can attest to the stress and anguish one can feel because of such. There are exceptions to the rule however, such as Maud’s mother, who speaks in her daughter’s defense to a neighbor as “when I would have been on the sofa or comfortably in bed, she trudges bravely away,” (pg. 267). I think that it takes a strong woman like Maud’s mother to stick up for her daughter to another women’s criticism. -Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Vice Commission of Chicago reports on the Working Conditions in Department Stores that Lead Female Employees into Prostitution, 1911 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This one’s a doozey. What was the cause of prostitution? Apparently, there were a few causes. Poor sanitary conditions in the working world affected the nervous system causing women to be more susceptible to weakened morality, fast paced modern life lead to eroticism, and poor pay meant a working girl couldn’t afford life’s necessities. I’d say there’s a grain of truth to these claims, poor pay in particular being a problem. Also, young women who worked in department stores were regularly exposed to unsavory individuals who wanted to sully their purity. Again there’s a bit truth, but the most realistic argument here is the case of male employers sexually exploiting girls. However, most of the other examples described seem less like prostitution and more like a girl trying to have a good time. Perhaps the vice commission couldn’t handle the idea of a sexual liberated women. Finally, I have to ask, what was the point of this report? Was it a cry for better working conditions and for better wages? Or was it an argument to keep women out of the working world in order to protect their virtue? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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The first part of this one was just hilarious. The beginning two paragraphs were especially ridiculous--the idea that &amp;quot;highly speeded modern life must stimulate these organisms?&amp;quot; (271) is so stupid that I just have to laugh at it. It claims that being busy and having a fast-paced life arouses women sexually, and then makes the equally odd jump that sexual arousal leads directly to prostitution. Some of the other points of the article are closer to the truth; the various ways in which a girl could get involved in prostitution (as her own boss or under a pimp) probably actually happened. That this kind of income was usually a supplement to the wages that were too low to live on is not a surprise (minimum wage is still too low to cover the cost of living today, as well). The specific stories of the women that were interviewed for the article gives scads more credibility than the ludicrous blanket statements of the beginning (who was this written by, anyways?). --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with the absurdity of this article that Taylor and Sarah both did a good job at conveying and in order to not be redundant I&amp;#039;ll bring up an issue I had with the section on Married Men in particular as &amp;quot;Married men are among the worst offenders against salesgirls (272)&amp;quot;. SERIOUSLY?? I mean, I know that there are instances were one who is married, male or female, oversteps flirtation boundaries (although not always intentional)without desiring to have anything come by the banter but when the situation states that if these women do not reciprocate the married man&amp;#039;s wishes they would complain and say their business was neglected? I thought men in this time were supposed to be arrogant, secure, strong and not easily offended by someone not returning their favor. If this accusation of the married men is true for the majority of married men at this time, maybe it was the male sex that was weak, insecure and irrational? -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;…when I hear so much said about our unreliability, our untrustworthiness, and even our vices&amp;quot; (p. 54).  I think it is pretty amazing that strongly held prejudices in the South guaranteed extremely low wages for domestic servants for so long.  These jobs were probably difficult to obtain, since jobs were very limited for African Americans, so they would work hard to keep them.  So for an employer to claim their domestic servant is unreliable or untrustworthy?  Or to complain about stereotypes of the race?  I don&amp;#039;t blame the woman who wrote this article for being offended.  I am sure she worked extremely hard, for barely any money and at the expense of never seeing her own children, and she could not believe the insensitivity of whites when it came to her job. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I, too, am offended, but not terribly surprised, at the prejudice that obviously existed in the South when the article was written. I am surprised at how much lower the black family&amp;#039;s income was than the women department store workers we read about. They could stand to make $24 a month at their much easier jobs, which was the total amount for the entire black Southern family (7-15 people! on a salary too meager for one!). The math there is just astounding. But, as the author points out, there wasn&amp;#039;t much she or the black community could do to fight this. If they protested at all, or even requested that their employers use more respectful titles, they were fired, blacklisted, and immediately replaced by another woman who would work for that wage or even less. I&amp;#039;m not sure if minimum wage existed at this time, but even if it was I doubt it would&amp;#039;ve been enforced for the benefit of these workers. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this source about domestic service was very interesting and also a little sad. Reading about how the conditions were different for black women and white women in the workforce didn&amp;#039;t surprise me, however. The white women were able to eventually obtain jobs other than being a domestic servant. African American women were not so lucky. The woman in the source said that &amp;quot;more than two-thirds of the negroes of the town where I live are menial servants of one kind or another...&amp;quot;(54) The conditions for these women were not always the best either. The wages they earned were usually lower than that of their white counterparts, they rarely got to see their children, they never even were able to go out for entertainment, and they relied on something known as the &amp;quot;service pan.&amp;quot; White women thought they had it tough but it seems clear that they probably didn&amp;#039;t even know what the word tough meant.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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From this article I actually felt the hatred and frustration that this anonymous woman felt. Just the thought of making merely enough to get by on, with the help of a service pan, daunting and very overwhelming. It’s reminds me of looking into the future weeks of school and seeing all of the work that lays ahead, knowing that some will not get done, that feeling of failure and there being no way out. For example, if and African American left a servitude job, finding another would be almost impossible, which is so very unfair. “If we did object, we should be driven out without the least ceremony, and in applying for work in other places, we should find it very hard to procure another situation,” (pg. 55).  I was very upset with the white women as well, not letting this woman bring her children around the house to see her when she wasn’t allowed to see them but “only once in two weeks, every other Sunday afternoon,” (pg. 54). I feel that the white families do not want to think or believe that an African American servant has children and a family to support; I think that they like to see her as an animal. -Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I was bewildered to read this.  The treatment the domestic servant had received by her employer was total disregard to recognize her as a human being.  She was taking care of her employers own children and they could not show a little compassion towards her and realize that her family needed her too.  As a mother, it would be unbearable to not see my children for that long period of time.  It took a strong woman to endure that.  This servant nursed their baby, nursed in what sense, like to suckle a baby? If so, was this a common expectation?  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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==Ellen Carol DuBois on &amp;quot;Harriet Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894-1909&amp;quot;==&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the most important questions I think women were most concerned with while trying to obtain suffrage is asked by DuBois on page. 276.  She claims that women were worried weather or not they could balance their work in the home with that of gaining suffrage.  It seems many women were concerned that they could not acheive a balance between the two and that there work towards suffrage would take away their focus from the home front.  I beleive that this question was not incredibly worrisome and that a balance was possible.  Even if they were in the work force, responsibilities on the home front could still be upheld.  Even today, women work and I still beleive they are a central figure at home.  Granted it was more difficult back then because women were attempting to accomplish more, but a balance was still possible. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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So the fight for women&amp;#039;s rights was divided not only over the issue of race, but also over socioeconomic status. Harriet Stanton Blatch tried to erase some of that hostility by reminding women of all classes that their different livelihoods depended on one another. The educated professional women wanted to consider themselves of a higher order, more prepared for civic responsibility. But by putting down the intelligence and ability of women working for wages, they were disparaging the image of all women who worked outside the home, a group that they themselves were a part of. Both groups of women had a stake in society&amp;#039;s opinion of women working and so needed to work together to force society to overcome the idea that working women were somehow less than &amp;quot;respectable.&amp;quot; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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==Female Perspectives on the Great Migration==&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading these letters to the &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chicago Defender&amp;#039;&amp;#039; makes a person realize how desperate the lives of many southern blacks were at the time. They all seem so anxious to get to Chicago, but I have to wonder how much they knew about the city and what life was like there. Here are women asking for any sort of job they can get so that they can support their families, but from our other readings we can infer that all that will be offered to them, if anything, will be difficult and low paying domestic service work. And the more black women who went North, the more they probably competed against one another and drove down their own potential wages. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I do wonder if the Chicago that was portrayed in the &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Defender&amp;#039;&amp;#039; was anything like what the Southern men and women found when they actually got there.  Regardless, Mary Ann is right in pointing out the tones of desperation in these letters being such a telling indicator of the financial and cultural hardships that black men and women found in the South.  I&amp;#039;d sort of be interested to know how effective this newspaper was at actually placing people in jobs and housing and how much migration it inspired.  -Erin B.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading these letters to the Chicago Defender really emphasizes the deplorable living situations in the South. The letter from a woman who had previously worked in a rural school and was looking for a job in domestic service really stood out to me. The idea that a housekeeping position in the North would pay better then a school teachers pay in the south really shows the desperate situation of black families in the south. Some of the people who wrote in to the newspaper claimed to have good references its sad to think that whatever experience they had previously the only job they would most likely be able to find was one as a domestic servant. --Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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These letters to the Chicago Defender are quite desperate as Mary Ann and Erin have both mentioned.  But I thought that I would approach this from two different directions: one the difference in the letters themselves. Two of the letters are written by teachers whose school is either closing or wages are too low.  These particular letters showcase the difference in education from the other letters. I also found it realistic that the teachers were looking for domestic work, though this work was quite hard, I am sure that the prospect of a room and further opportunities in a bustling city were the motivating factors among the poor wages and general conditions in the south. Second, the letters seem to note a trust that these women had in the Chicago Defender, implying that these women believed that the Defender would help them find these jobs. The reality of this was that thousands upon thousands of black men and women were migrating to Chicago leaving them, as Mary Ann said to compete for positions in domestic service.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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==Marie Jenny Howe and an &amp;quot;Anti-Suffrage Monologue&amp;quot;==&lt;br /&gt;
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It was almost impossible to keep a straight face while reading this particular article and I had to read a passage to my roomate and he was also laughing hysterically.  This is the first intense anti-suffrage argument that I have come accross with this much candor and I found it incredibly interesting.  Marie Jenny Howe essentially gives her gender no credit and claims they hardly posses any intellectual capacity and are even incapable of doing something as simple as placing a ballot in a box.  She wants to continue with the established order and keep women down in the domestic sphere because &amp;quot;some one must wash the dishes.&amp;quot;  She continues to take a very conservative approach to women&amp;#039;s roles and even mentions the Bible as reason to keep women suppressed.  Myself, and others I am sure do not agree with Howe&amp;#039;s view of women as an imcompetent gender and beleive women should have never been suppressed like they were. -afrisk &lt;br /&gt;
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I have to admit to getting some strange looks from my roommate because I was laughing to myself while reading this one. Howe manages to outline the arguments made in favor of denying women the right to vote while simultaneously making each and every one of them sound ridiculous. It reads like a modern political satire, and it&amp;#039;s interesting to discover that people used humor to make their points in Howe&amp;#039;s time as well. Her decision to structure her work in couplets especially emphasizes the bizarre dichotomies that women became trapped in. They were angels and depraved, vicious individuals all at once. I suspect that class differences accounted for some of the disparity. Women of the upper class would have been to angelic and innocent to involved themselves in politics, while working class women would be too ignorant to deal with politics properly. When phrased this way, it&amp;#039;s hard to see how anyone could have continued to employ these arguments against women voting, but I suppose if the anti-suffragists were really using women&amp;#039;s hats as a reason to deny them the franchise, they weren&amp;#039;t exactly trying to stick to even remotely reasonable attacks. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I, too, found myself laughing at this article, particularly the line “Besides, when I look around me at the men, I feel that God never meant us women to be too particular” (p 104).  The pamphlet provided a clever way to point out the ridiculous and contradictory arguments put forth by anti-suffragists without aggressively attacking them.  However, I do wonder if this pamphlet helped to change anyone’s mind about suffrage, or if it was mainly an amusing piece for those already committed to the cause.  – Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this article extremely entertaining. I like how Howe stated her arguments in a nonthreatening manner while also proving how ridiculous the arguments of the anti suffragists were. One point that particularly intrigued me was how many believed many women should non be exposed to the &amp;quot;muck and mire of politics&amp;quot; (101) in the public sphere. Many women were already working outside of the home in dangerous factories with terrible conditions and long hours. Could the scandalous nature of politics be much worse? --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I think this reading was very amusing.  “If you don’t like one you can take the other“,  for Howe meant there were so many reasons why a woman should not vote.  Interesting that she thought it was more dignified for a woman to tease, nag, cry, or make a scene to get what she wanted rather than vote for it.  - Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Besides the fact that Howe begins her monologue by calling herself a &amp;quot;modern up-to-date woman&amp;quot; (106), this piece seems to come from a man&amp;#039;s point of view.  Throughout the monologue she continues to refer to women as &amp;#039;they&amp;#039; rather than &amp;#039;we&amp;#039;.  The fact that it seems like a man&amp;#039;s point of view indicates to me that it is attacking the masculinity of anti-suffragists. - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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This is like the Colbert Report for the suffrage movement.  &amp;quot;Once I saw a woman driving a horse, and the horse ran away with her.  Isn&amp;#039;t that just like a woman?&amp;quot; Hilarious.  I&amp;#039;m with Alice, though, on this probably not being a persuasive piece or even widely read by those outside of the suffrage movement. - Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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Just like all the other posts stated, I found this article more comical than persuasive.  Howe tries to argue that women do not need the right to vote using by a lot of (in my opinion) ridiculous points.  I particularly liked how she stated &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t care about facts. I ask for proof.&amp;quot;  I think that suffragists at this time were trying hard to push for rights for women, and that should be Howe&amp;#039;s proof.  She seems to really embody the idea that women are passive creatures which is almost, in a sense, degrading to women, especially when she states &amp;quot;I am a creature of impulse, instinct and intuition- and I glory in it.&amp;quot;  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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== Suffrage Militant Alice Paul Goes to Jail ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I have encountered Alice Paul before in general American History classes, but I had never actually read any of what she wrote about her experience in jail so this was very interesting.  While it is a testament to her organizations strength and determination, it also provides an insight into the horrible conditions of jails at this time.  Not that jails are meant to be five star resorts, but the lack of ventilation, the inedible food, and the uncleanly atmosphere is appalling.  What’s worse is that these women were treated like they were mentally deficient, when that was clearly not the case, and the authorities just needed a way to control them.  Events like this got the suffragettes media attention though, which they needed in order to garner support for the movement, so even though what these women had to go through was awful, they knew it was necessary.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it appalling how Alice Paul was immediately suspected of mental illness after embarking on her hunger strike. The jail warden and psychologists were obviously looking for any reason to have her committed. The most convenient excuse was an &amp;#039;obsession&amp;#039; with President Wilson, who Paul mentioned only in reference to her beliefs about gaining suffrage. As Alice W stated, the only way authorities could control these powerful women was through lies. This proves how frightened and intimidated many men were of suffragists. They would use any means to control women, even forging insanity. -Anna Holman &lt;br /&gt;
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==Open-Air Meetings: A New Suffrage Tactic, Florence Luscomb==&lt;br /&gt;
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The one sentence that stood out to me in this essay, &amp;quot;We even reveled in dog-fights; for, as our chief remarked while we were enjoying one such experience, &amp;#039;After all, there is nothing to draw a crowd like a dog-fight,&amp;#039;...(100). My first thought was Michael Vick and how much the media paid attention to his role in dog-fights yet women suffragists were right at home among dogs and thought of them as admirers. How society has changed over the years...-Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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==4. The &amp;#039;&amp;#039;New York Times&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Reports on the Tragedy of the Triangle Factory Fire, 1911== &lt;br /&gt;
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The death of these 141 women and few men could have been preventable had the owners taken into account that a building cannot be fully &amp;quot;fire-proof&amp;quot; with hundreds of cotton shirts lying around. One fire escape is clearly not enough for 600 employees especially when many were not familiar with the layout of the building. I found it heartbreaking that had it just been a matter of minutes these employees would not of burned nor lept to their death and even more appalling that for hours the bodies were ignored. I understand that firefighters need to do their job and stop the fire but could they not of split the work and tried to move bodies so they could aid workers instead of watching them jump 100 feet to their death? The workers were helpless victims and the fire showed the ignorance of employers to the safety needs of their workers. -Megan W.&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

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		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_5_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 5 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_5_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-02-23T00:30:38Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Female Perspectives on the Great Migration */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;NOTE: If the document/essay you want to write about isn&amp;#039;t listed, add it using the following format: == Author, Title, Year ==&lt;br /&gt;
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==Working Women Write the Jewish Daily Forward==&lt;br /&gt;
While this essay was not too long in length I found interesting the early day versions of advice columns in newspapers. Women, specifically Jewish women were able to write about their struggles and stories in search of advice instead of just relying on a diary to record their thoughts. It reminded me of reading American Girl magazine when I was younger and learning about different girls stories and how they expressed any concern with their lives. I found it great that the advice given back to girls, much like today, was for the betterment of women. The advice encouraged women to step forward and have a voice in the workplace and home. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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The Jewish Daily Forward contained some interesting submissions. The first one written by the teenager who was being sexually harassed struck me because this is something that many women endured (and still endure) during the early part of the 20th century. The advice, though correct, causes me to wonder: would anyone do anything about the foreman? It seems like the circumstances surrounding women, especially immigrant women working in shops/factories at this time were pretty bleak. I wish it weren’t so, but I wonder if any action would have been taken against the foreman at all, she explains that this is a small town so maybe that would have any effect but so many of these cases, if they were even reported, went unresolved.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Burden of Rural Women&amp;#039;s Lives, 1900-1901 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading the Burdens of Rural Women’s Lives the author states that she learned two things from her life on the farm. First, the work never kills. Second, that work must be calculated beforehand to figure out ways to be more efficient. I think these two things are emphasized throughout her description of her life. Not only did these rural women have to worry about keeping the home, but they also had to work on the farm. The lives of rural women were tough, and I would argue that they as tough if not tougher than urban working class women’s lives because they worked the same, if not longer hours as the working class urban women, but they also had to do household tasks without the appliances that were available in the cities and without electricity. Based off of the author’s description of her life, I think that these two lessons that she is passing on were probably essential in getting by as a rural farm woman. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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These women&amp;#039;s lives totally interest me.  As plainly as she tells her life story, as pertaining to work, you get a real sense of the pride that she felt in being so industrious and in being so good at what she did.  She even mentions the books she read while she used to churn butter.  She was constantly occupied and never (except when she taught before she was married, presumably) for a wage.  But by most measures, she and her husband led very successful lives.  They provided for their five kids and sent them to school, one even to Cornell.  And at 58, it sounds like she even gets to &amp;quot;retire&amp;quot;.  The values of rural living seem very different than those of urban living.  As more and more people moved into urban areas, i wonder how this affected the lifestyles of farm families.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Agnes Nestor, The Story of a Glove Maker ==&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading Burdens of Rural Women’s Lives I thought that the rural farm woman’s life was incredibly difficult and I stated that it was as tough if not tougher than urban working class women’s lives. However, after reading The Story of a Glove Maker I think I changed my mind. Urban working women had to work in factories with irregular pay and irregular hours all they while they were threatened by their male superiors who could fire them at a moments notice. Not only did they have to worry about keeping their jobs, but they had to worry about being sexually exploited. All the while, these women, too, had to worry about keeping their homes.  They also seemed to have fewer opportunities for advancement than the rural farm women.  The farm women worked incredibly hard, but the author of Burdens of Rural Women’s Lives had the ability to be educated and have her children be educated, one of her children was at Cornell University! She also seemed to have a lot to show for her work, while it seems that urban women were working hard just to get by. I don’t know if it is fair to compare and contrast, but these women all had difficult lives. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin on a lot of the points she made.  This piece captured my attention because of the harsh conditions that these women were forced to work in.  I found in particularly difficult to not feel bad for the girls because stress they had to endure by working in industrial places like a glove factory.  Nestor references how the girls tried to find ways to produce more gloves in an hour and would sometimes even work during their breaks just to get more done.  She also revealed how the women were afraid of the machine breaking because it meant they could not make more gloves, which meant they would not get their payment.  Nestor shows the effect of industry on the working woman and it&amp;#039;s effects.  I wonder how women at this time dealt with professions like this without getting extremely frustrated.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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== Fannie Barrier Williams Describes the &amp;quot;Problem of Employment for Negro Women,&amp;quot; 1903 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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As so many black women worked in domestic service and were in contact with whites, Williams preferred to see the elevation of domestic service into respectable work and a recognized profession, believing that it would raise the race in general. But she suggests that there was a tendency to look down on domestic service within the black community, though I think it may not all have been a result of the demeaning nature of the work itself, but rather that the women who worked in domestic service were essentially working for the betterment of white people in a very direct way. Williams wrote, “If our girls work for wages in a nice home, rather than in a factory or over a counter, they are ruthlessly scorned by their friends and acquaintances” (263). For instance, factory work as compared to domestic service also required manual labor, but while it’s products were more to the benefit of whites, it was in a way less obviously so than domestic service. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Williams&amp;#039; views on domestic service to be quite interesting.  For example, she thought that domestic service would eventually become a profession and there would training for it as if it were a normal job.  Obviously domestic service never became a profession and looking back on that thought today, many of us would probably laugh at the idea.  However, for that time period, I don&amp;#039;t think her ideas were too out of place because of the incredibly limited employment opportunities for black women at this time.  Domestic service was one of their few options, therefore I think Williams was almost forced into beleiving this because she didn&amp;#039;t know anything else.  Also, she thought that domestic servants should be looked upon in the same light as women in the working world.  Again, it is tough to agree or disagree because domestic service is all black women really know and therefore they can almost only beleive that there work is equal to that of white women in society. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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On page 264 it says that &amp;quot;the everyday man and woman who make society must change their foolish notions as to what is the polite thing for a young woman to do... my only plea is that we shall protect and respect our girls who honestly and intelligently enter this service, either from preference or necessity&amp;quot; and I find that quote to be loaded with so many things that she has to say. First, I applaud her for realizing that it is not always the role of the woman that needs to change, but societies perception of that role. Then, she also describes how sometimes good, smart people have terrible jobs (college kids waitress-ing???)because of their situation and realization that it would be the best opportunity they could have to get themselves the glory of never having to have to do that terrible work again. I enjoy this quote from the reading in particular because it applies to both races in the lower class and can even still be applied to a lot of things inherently wrong with society today (and she doesn&amp;#039;t sound bitter, rude or condescending in this statement). It also helps her statement that by working these service jobs and highering the status of them, the black race as a whole could race their association with these jobs and in turn their status in life. -SSellers&lt;br /&gt;
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In reading this article I began to question Fannie’s race. I thought maybe Fannie may have been white because she isn’t criticizing every other race and complaining about the work that African American women have. I found it unusual for an African American woman to empower her kind and their jobs instead of criticizing the work and people. Fannie doesn’t seen too upset about African American women only having an opportunity in the domestic service industry, and instead of denouncing the trade all together, she finds that only a few changes need to be made. I really enjoyed the fact that Fannie is empowering her women rather than continuing to remind them of the short-falls they will face in their life and the hardships that come with their color. “Our girls must be made to feel that there is no stepping down when they become professional housekeepers. The relative dignity, respectability, and honor of this profession should be first taught in our schools,” (pg. 264). -Morgan M &lt;br /&gt;
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I had the same question as Morgan while reading this piece and decided to do a little research.  I found out that she was a black woman, with a college education.  I could not find anything about her working as a domestic servant.  Now I wonder who the intended audience of this piece was.  Was it aimed at black domestic servants or other black intellectuals? - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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From this source, I feel that Williams feels that she wishes black people were in demand for other jobs besides domestic work but since they are not they should put their hard work ethics to use and take pride in the job they are given. She thinks that women who are educated shouldn&amp;#039;t necessarily be upset working as a domestic servant but should be thankful to have a job like this. I thought this part was interesting because I know it would be hard for me to think about going to college for 4+ years and then still having to become a domestic servant. I would definitely be a little upset and not want to take pride in the work I was doing especially if the conditions were not so great. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== Harriet Brunkhurst Laments the Home Problems of &amp;quot;Business Girls,&amp;quot; 1910 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;She could earn her own living, but she could not fight her own battles…&amp;quot; (p. 267).  Many of the problems women faced going in to the workforce are quite obvious to us:  low wages, harsh conditions, sexual harassment, etc…  But Harriet Brunkhurst&amp;#039;s article points out a less obvious problem that many girls faced in America - being treated as working women by their families.  Even after working all day, they were still expected to keep up with their chores and responsibilities at home.  Yet boys and men in the same situations were not expected to carry as much responsibility at home and were recognized for the hours they spent working outside the home.  Yet again, there is this difficulty of separating women from the private sphere.  And I think that even today some women are expected to carry more responsibilities within the home, even if they work outside of the home. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree here that a women in the working world can experience added stress when she is at home.  A woman can go to work, but she is still expected to manage the &amp;#039;domestic sphere&amp;#039; when she returns home and this can place a lot of stress on women.  For example, in this excerpt, the girl is expected to work all day, then when she comes home, she gets grief for not helping out with the household chores.  It can be very difficult to balance life in the working world with the home front, and women are often expected to do a lot in both fields. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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This article by far is my favorite this year because I found so many examples in it that are still present in us women today. The notion that we as women, who are independent, still come home to more work while the men of the house are allowed their “rest and relaxation” because they are said to do more. That is so untrue. Why is that women why work a job, attend school, or have any other daunting task that takes up most her of her time, is expected to return home after such a day to the “domestic sphere”  and must continue to maintain it? I find that very unfair and it hits home personally for women in today’s age as well. I feel that today it is just as terrible a situation as it was 100 years ago, if not worse. Because of the many facets of life today, women tend to take on many different tasks in the “public sphere” of life and yet must also maintain the “domestic sphere”. As I’m sure every women has gone through this more than once in her life, all women can attest to the stress and anguish one can feel because of such. There are exceptions to the rule however, such as Maud’s mother, who speaks in her daughter’s defense to a neighbor as “when I would have been on the sofa or comfortably in bed, she trudges bravely away,” (pg. 267). I think that it takes a strong woman like Maud’s mother to stick up for her daughter to another women’s criticism. -Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Vice Commission of Chicago reports on the Working Conditions in Department Stores that Lead Female Employees into Prostitution, 1911 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This one’s a doozey. What was the cause of prostitution? Apparently, there were a few causes. Poor sanitary conditions in the working world affected the nervous system causing women to be more susceptible to weakened morality, fast paced modern life lead to eroticism, and poor pay meant a working girl couldn’t afford life’s necessities. I’d say there’s a grain of truth to these claims, poor pay in particular being a problem. Also, young women who worked in department stores were regularly exposed to unsavory individuals who wanted to sully their purity. Again there’s a bit truth, but the most realistic argument here is the case of male employers sexually exploiting girls. However, most of the other examples described seem less like prostitution and more like a girl trying to have a good time. Perhaps the vice commission couldn’t handle the idea of a sexual liberated women. Finally, I have to ask, what was the point of this report? Was it a cry for better working conditions and for better wages? Or was it an argument to keep women out of the working world in order to protect their virtue? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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The first part of this one was just hilarious. The beginning two paragraphs were especially ridiculous--the idea that &amp;quot;highly speeded modern life must stimulate these organisms?&amp;quot; (271) is so stupid that I just have to laugh at it. It claims that being busy and having a fast-paced life arouses women sexually, and then makes the equally odd jump that sexual arousal leads directly to prostitution. Some of the other points of the article are closer to the truth; the various ways in which a girl could get involved in prostitution (as her own boss or under a pimp) probably actually happened. That this kind of income was usually a supplement to the wages that were too low to live on is not a surprise (minimum wage is still too low to cover the cost of living today, as well). The specific stories of the women that were interviewed for the article gives scads more credibility than the ludicrous blanket statements of the beginning (who was this written by, anyways?). --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with the absurdity of this article that Taylor and Sarah both did a good job at conveying and in order to not be redundant I&amp;#039;ll bring up an issue I had with the section on Married Men in particular as &amp;quot;Married men are among the worst offenders against salesgirls (272)&amp;quot;. SERIOUSLY?? I mean, I know that there are instances were one who is married, male or female, oversteps flirtation boundaries (although not always intentional)without desiring to have anything come by the banter but when the situation states that if these women do not reciprocate the married man&amp;#039;s wishes they would complain and say their business was neglected? I thought men in this time were supposed to be arrogant, secure, strong and not easily offended by someone not returning their favor. If this accusation of the married men is true for the majority of married men at this time, maybe it was the male sex that was weak, insecure and irrational? -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Harsh Conditions of Domestic Service ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;…when I hear so much said about our unreliability, our untrustworthiness, and even our vices&amp;quot; (p. 54).  I think it is pretty amazing that strongly held prejudices in the South guaranteed extremely low wages for domestic servants for so long.  These jobs were probably difficult to obtain, since jobs were very limited for African Americans, so they would work hard to keep them.  So for an employer to claim their domestic servant is unreliable or untrustworthy?  Or to complain about stereotypes of the race?  I don&amp;#039;t blame the woman who wrote this article for being offended.  I am sure she worked extremely hard, for barely any money and at the expense of never seeing her own children, and she could not believe the insensitivity of whites when it came to her job. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I, too, am offended, but not terribly surprised, at the prejudice that obviously existed in the South when the article was written. I am surprised at how much lower the black family&amp;#039;s income was than the women department store workers we read about. They could stand to make $24 a month at their much easier jobs, which was the total amount for the entire black Southern family (7-15 people! on a salary too meager for one!). The math there is just astounding. But, as the author points out, there wasn&amp;#039;t much she or the black community could do to fight this. If they protested at all, or even requested that their employers use more respectful titles, they were fired, blacklisted, and immediately replaced by another woman who would work for that wage or even less. I&amp;#039;m not sure if minimum wage existed at this time, but even if it was I doubt it would&amp;#039;ve been enforced for the benefit of these workers. --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this source about domestic service was very interesting and also a little sad. Reading about how the conditions were different for black women and white women in the workforce didn&amp;#039;t surprise me, however. The white women were able to eventually obtain jobs other than being a domestic servant. African American women were not so lucky. The woman in the source said that &amp;quot;more than two-thirds of the negroes of the town where I live are menial servants of one kind or another...&amp;quot;(54) The conditions for these women were not always the best either. The wages they earned were usually lower than that of their white counterparts, they rarely got to see their children, they never even were able to go out for entertainment, and they relied on something known as the &amp;quot;service pan.&amp;quot; White women thought they had it tough but it seems clear that they probably didn&amp;#039;t even know what the word tough meant.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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From this article I actually felt the hatred and frustration that this anonymous woman felt. Just the thought of making merely enough to get by on, with the help of a service pan, daunting and very overwhelming. It’s reminds me of looking into the future weeks of school and seeing all of the work that lays ahead, knowing that some will not get done, that feeling of failure and there being no way out. For example, if and African American left a servitude job, finding another would be almost impossible, which is so very unfair. “If we did object, we should be driven out without the least ceremony, and in applying for work in other places, we should find it very hard to procure another situation,” (pg. 55).  I was very upset with the white women as well, not letting this woman bring her children around the house to see her when she wasn’t allowed to see them but “only once in two weeks, every other Sunday afternoon,” (pg. 54). I feel that the white families do not want to think or believe that an African American servant has children and a family to support; I think that they like to see her as an animal. -Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I was bewildered to read this.  The treatment the domestic servant had received by her employer was total disregard to recognize her as a human being.  She was taking care of her employers own children and they could not show a little compassion towards her and realize that her family needed her too.  As a mother, it would be unbearable to not see my children for that long period of time.  It took a strong woman to endure that.  This servant nursed their baby, nursed in what sense, like to suckle a baby? If so, was this a common expectation?  -MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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==Ellen Carol DuBois on &amp;quot;Harriet Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894-1909&amp;quot;==&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the most important questions I think women were most concerned with while trying to obtain suffrage is asked by DuBois on page. 276.  She claims that women were worried weather or not they could balance their work in the home with that of gaining suffrage.  It seems many women were concerned that they could not acheive a balance between the two and that there work towards suffrage would take away their focus from the home front.  I beleive that this question was not incredibly worrisome and that a balance was possible.  Even if they were in the work force, responsibilities on the home front could still be upheld.  Even today, women work and I still beleive they are a central figure at home.  Granted it was more difficult back then because women were attempting to accomplish more, but a balance was still possible. -afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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So the fight for women&amp;#039;s rights was divided not only over the issue of race, but also over socioeconomic status. Harriet Stanton Blatch tried to erase some of that hostility by reminding women of all classes that their different livelihoods depended on one another. The educated professional women wanted to consider themselves of a higher order, more prepared for civic responsibility. But by putting down the intelligence and ability of women working for wages, they were disparaging the image of all women who worked outside the home, a group that they themselves were a part of. Both groups of women had a stake in society&amp;#039;s opinion of women working and so needed to work together to force society to overcome the idea that working women were somehow less than &amp;quot;respectable.&amp;quot; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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==Female Perspectives on the Great Migration==&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading these letters to the &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chicago Defender&amp;#039;&amp;#039; makes a person realize how desperate the lives of many southern blacks were at the time. They all seem so anxious to get to Chicago, but I have to wonder how much they knew about the city and what life was like there. Here are women asking for any sort of job they can get so that they can support their families, but from our other readings we can infer that all that will be offered to them, if anything, will be difficult and low paying domestic service work. And the more black women who went North, the more they probably competed against one another and drove down their own potential wages. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I do wonder if the Chicago that was portrayed in the &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Defender&amp;#039;&amp;#039; was anything like what the Southern men and women found when they actually got there.  Regardless, Mary Ann is right in pointing out the tones of desperation in these letters being such a telling indicator of the financial and cultural hardships that black men and women found in the South.  I&amp;#039;d sort of be interested to know how effective this newspaper was at actually placing people in jobs and housing and how much migration it inspired.  -Erin B.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading these letters to the Chicago Defender really emphasizes the deplorable living situations in the South. The letter from a woman who had previously worked in a rural school and was looking for a job in domestic service really stood out to me. The idea that a housekeeping position in the North would pay better then a school teachers pay in the south really shows the desperate situation of black families in the south. Some of the people who wrote in to the newspaper claimed to have good references its sad to think that whatever experience they had previously the only job they would most likely be able to find was one as a domestic servant. --Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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==Marie Jenny Howe and an &amp;quot;Anti-Suffrage Monologue&amp;quot;==&lt;br /&gt;
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It was almost impossible to keep a straight face while reading this particular article and I had to read a passage to my roomate and he was also laughing hysterically.  This is the first intense anti-suffrage argument that I have come accross with this much candor and I found it incredibly interesting.  Marie Jenny Howe essentially gives her gender no credit and claims they hardly posses any intellectual capacity and are even incapable of doing something as simple as placing a ballot in a box.  She wants to continue with the established order and keep women down in the domestic sphere because &amp;quot;some one must wash the dishes.&amp;quot;  She continues to take a very conservative approach to women&amp;#039;s roles and even mentions the Bible as reason to keep women suppressed.  Myself, and others I am sure do not agree with Howe&amp;#039;s view of women as an imcompetent gender and beleive women should have never been suppressed like they were. -afrisk &lt;br /&gt;
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I have to admit to getting some strange looks from my roommate because I was laughing to myself while reading this one. Howe manages to outline the arguments made in favor of denying women the right to vote while simultaneously making each and every one of them sound ridiculous. It reads like a modern political satire, and it&amp;#039;s interesting to discover that people used humor to make their points in Howe&amp;#039;s time as well. Her decision to structure her work in couplets especially emphasizes the bizarre dichotomies that women became trapped in. They were angels and depraved, vicious individuals all at once. I suspect that class differences accounted for some of the disparity. Women of the upper class would have been to angelic and innocent to involved themselves in politics, while working class women would be too ignorant to deal with politics properly. When phrased this way, it&amp;#039;s hard to see how anyone could have continued to employ these arguments against women voting, but I suppose if the anti-suffragists were really using women&amp;#039;s hats as a reason to deny them the franchise, they weren&amp;#039;t exactly trying to stick to even remotely reasonable attacks. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I, too, found myself laughing at this article, particularly the line “Besides, when I look around me at the men, I feel that God never meant us women to be too particular” (p 104).  The pamphlet provided a clever way to point out the ridiculous and contradictory arguments put forth by anti-suffragists without aggressively attacking them.  However, I do wonder if this pamphlet helped to change anyone’s mind about suffrage, or if it was mainly an amusing piece for those already committed to the cause.  – Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this article extremely entertaining. I like how Howe stated her arguments in a nonthreatening manner while also proving how ridiculous the arguments of the anti suffragists were. One point that particularly intrigued me was how many believed many women should non be exposed to the &amp;quot;muck and mire of politics&amp;quot; (101) in the public sphere. Many women were already working outside of the home in dangerous factories with terrible conditions and long hours. Could the scandalous nature of politics be much worse? --Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I think this reading was very amusing.  “If you don’t like one you can take the other“,  for Howe meant there were so many reasons why a woman should not vote.  Interesting that she thought it was more dignified for a woman to tease, nag, cry, or make a scene to get what she wanted rather than vote for it.  - Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Besides the fact that Howe begins her monologue by calling herself a &amp;quot;modern up-to-date woman&amp;quot; (106), this piece seems to come from a man&amp;#039;s point of view.  Throughout the monologue she continues to refer to women as &amp;#039;they&amp;#039; rather than &amp;#039;we&amp;#039;.  The fact that it seems like a man&amp;#039;s point of view indicates to me that it is attacking the masculinity of anti-suffragists. - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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This is like the Colbert Report for the suffrage movement.  &amp;quot;Once I saw a woman driving a horse, and the horse ran away with her.  Isn&amp;#039;t that just like a woman?&amp;quot; Hilarious.  I&amp;#039;m with Alice, though, on this probably not being a persuasive piece or even widely read by those outside of the suffrage movement. - Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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Just like all the other posts stated, I found this article more comical than persuasive.  Howe tries to argue that women do not need the right to vote using by a lot of (in my opinion) ridiculous points.  I particularly liked how she stated &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t care about facts. I ask for proof.&amp;quot;  I think that suffragists at this time were trying hard to push for rights for women, and that should be Howe&amp;#039;s proof.  She seems to really embody the idea that women are passive creatures which is almost, in a sense, degrading to women, especially when she states &amp;quot;I am a creature of impulse, instinct and intuition- and I glory in it.&amp;quot;  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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== Suffrage Militant Alice Paul Goes to Jail ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I have encountered Alice Paul before in general American History classes, but I had never actually read any of what she wrote about her experience in jail so this was very interesting.  While it is a testament to her organizations strength and determination, it also provides an insight into the horrible conditions of jails at this time.  Not that jails are meant to be five star resorts, but the lack of ventilation, the inedible food, and the uncleanly atmosphere is appalling.  What’s worse is that these women were treated like they were mentally deficient, when that was clearly not the case, and the authorities just needed a way to control them.  Events like this got the suffragettes media attention though, which they needed in order to garner support for the movement, so even though what these women had to go through was awful, they knew it was necessary.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it appalling how Alice Paul was immediately suspected of mental illness after embarking on her hunger strike. The jail warden and psychologists were obviously looking for any reason to have her committed. The most convenient excuse was an &amp;#039;obsession&amp;#039; with President Wilson, who Paul mentioned only in reference to her beliefs about gaining suffrage. As Alice W stated, the only way authorities could control these powerful women was through lies. This proves how frightened and intimidated many men were of suffragists. They would use any means to control women, even forging insanity. -Anna Holman &lt;br /&gt;
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==Open-Air Meetings: A New Suffrage Tactic, Florence Luscomb==&lt;br /&gt;
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The one sentence that stood out to me in this essay, &amp;quot;We even reveled in dog-fights; for, as our chief remarked while we were enjoying one such experience, &amp;#039;After all, there is nothing to draw a crowd like a dog-fight,&amp;#039;...(100). My first thought was Michael Vick and how much the media paid attention to his role in dog-fights yet women suffragists were right at home among dogs and thought of them as admirers. How society has changed over the years...-Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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==4. The &amp;#039;&amp;#039;New York Times&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Reports on the Tragedy of the Triangle Factory Fire, 1911== &lt;br /&gt;
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The death of these 141 women and few men could have been preventable had the owners taken into account that a building cannot be fully &amp;quot;fire-proof&amp;quot; with hundreds of cotton shirts lying around. One fire escape is clearly not enough for 600 employees especially when many were not familiar with the layout of the building. I found it heartbreaking that had it just been a matter of minutes these employees would not of burned nor lept to their death and even more appalling that for hours the bodies were ignored. I understand that firefighters need to do their job and stop the fire but could they not of split the work and tried to move bodies so they could aid workers instead of watching them jump 100 feet to their death? The workers were helpless victims and the fire showed the ignorance of employers to the safety needs of their workers. -Megan W.&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_4_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 4 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_4_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-02-04T04:09:29Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Chapter 2 – Expanding Horizons for Educated Women */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Linda Gordon, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women’s Welfare Activism, 1890-1945” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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On page 23 Linda Gordon states that &amp;quot;Black welfare reformers were more concerned to combine the development of protective institutions for women with an antirape discourse. Among whites, rape was not an important topic of discussion during this period, and in protective work for women and girls, male sexuality was treated as natural and irrepressible&amp;quot; and I understand that the times were completely different but how did society of the time use this to justify rape? Infidelity and Adultery I could possibly understand this being used, but not rape. She even uses the word &amp;quot;girls&amp;quot; which to me suggests children. Was it still okay then? From the rest of the document by Linda Gordon I also take it that everything that is wrong with the welfare reform system today was put in place by the white reformers--Maybe they should have left the social work up to the Black reformers?   -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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The welfare activism article notes that a fair amount of the black women involved in welfare were married, and it was more generally acceptable for black women to be involved in public life than white women, which I suppose is partly due to their positions as heads of families during slavery’s heyday and the fact that many black women had to work outside the home due to economic necessity (except these reform women who were pretty well off). However, Anna J. Cooper seemed to believe that black men were not supportive of women outside the home and didn’t recognize their value in politics and reform. What accounts for this disparity? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was cool how even though black women may not have had the advantages that white women had in the reform movement, they made the best out of it. White women raised money but they also were able to gain support or recognition from people in congress. Black women were not so fortunate but they did not let that stop them; they had bake sales, church dinners, and other such functions to raise money and awareness. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Amy, I noticed the differences between how black and white women raised money for their causes. It seems like white women relied far more on their status and privilege to gain access to (mostly white men) policy makers and other influential leaders who could help them. Black women, for the most part, did not have this option. So they turned to their communities for support, in much the same way as they had turned voting and politics into community activities. Black women already had a solid tradition of getting the community to rally around them for a cause, so when the need arose for schools and public health measures and other programs, women again banded to together for the good of the group as a whole. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann&amp;#039;s observations on how the different races raised money, awareness, and support. It should be expected that white women primarily relied upon their race and social status because those are integral parts of their society. Black women, however, were all looked down upon, and seen as having the same roots. They were all seen as inferior, and many seen as ex-slaves or children of slaves, solely because of their race. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the most intriguing part, and yet a short piece, of Linda Gordon’s article to be on the Lesbianism and homosexual escapades. Different from black women’s dependence on their community and occasionally their husbands, white women greatly relied on one-another rather than their husbands or families. “The great majority of white women were single-34 percent had ever been married, and only 18 percent remained married during their peak political activity,” (pg. 229). To this effect women Gordon gives the fact that “28 percent were in relationships with other women…called Boston marriages,” (pg. 229). I think that we as a generation think that Lesbianism is a new trend/ideal, and yet these women were practicing it in the 18th-19th century. This was probably not seen as a controversial idea to these women, so why is it such a big issue today when is a part of history? ---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t believe that rape was ever &amp;quot;justified&amp;quot; by anyone, and it has always been seen as a barbarism, even when it was performed ritualistically by warring states. Just because a society&amp;#039;s dialogue doesn&amp;#039;t include rape doesn&amp;#039;t mean that it was accepted, by any means. Also, to encapsulate human nature as such is not a dismissal, as is evident even in our so-enlightened society when we &amp;quot;dismiss&amp;quot; the actions of men that is at times chauvinistic or derogatory as &amp;quot;boys will be boys&amp;quot;--does that mean that such behavior, speaking in broad terms, justified? I would think no. Also, while it seems as though black women did not have the kind of access to politicized power as white women did, Gordon points out, perhaps in contradiction to some of her conclusions, that half of the African American women who were married (85%) had influential husbands. I don&amp;#039;t really see much difference between what the African American women did in comparison to WASP women, despite Gordon&amp;#039;s attempts to highlight them. To me, it seems as though the only thing that really differed, notwithstanding the race issue (which I&amp;#039;m not dismissing), was the time that had elapsed between emancipation and what was then contemporary times. Like WASP women&amp;#039;s groups, black women&amp;#039;s societies were exclusionary, and it seems that if a few more generations had elapsed then the black women would be just as focused on maintaining social hierarchies as white women were. Perhaps they&amp;#039;re concentration in the rural South maintained this as immigrants seldom ventured South and therefore black women would not have a class of &amp;quot;others&amp;quot; to perform activism on. But then again the entire African American community was persecuted against so I&amp;#039;m sure it&amp;#039;s not as simplistic as that. I found the &amp;quot;white view&amp;quot; as a class issue, which I agree with and that the WASP women who were single and had a great deal of autonomy assumed that this was a class privilege and something that would not be desirable for poorer women.       -schang &lt;br /&gt;
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While I agree with the comments above noticing the differences between black and white women&amp;#039;s approaches to fundraising I found interesting how they worked together as well. According to the article women seemed to be the ringleaders not only for rights for themselves but for equality by working together against race riots, ie. Chicago 1919 p. 224. Even more interesting were women in the South working together, where they suffered racial violence constantly. It was not common to see women of both races working together for a cause but both races had common interests, each was under the domestic sphere and both had to fight for not only themselves but generations to come. I did think the way black women worked together was more effective, even without government support they were able to come together without the support of men and build a bond through sisterhood and charity. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the information presented in this article regarding the priorities of black women and their focus on education was revealing.  On page 225, Gordon points out that “education was the single most important area of activism for black women”.  It makes sense that this would be the case, but I would have guessed that issues of equality would have outranked education as the primary concern. –E Fritz&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems almost like black and white women were working towards two entirely different goals.  White women were working towards recognition and forming different groups such as the YWCA.  But they were either excluding these black women, or they were being excluded by society.  It is hard to beleive that blacks were even being lynched in the 20th century.  The push for women&amp;#039;s rights for whites seems to be taking much greater strides than for blacks because of the intense segregation.  I feel for the black women more so than white women because they were forced to go through many more difficult hardships for not only civil, but also women&amp;#039;s rights.-afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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== Judy Yung, &amp;quot;The Social Awakening of Chinese American Women as Reported in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chung Sai Yat Po&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1900-1911&amp;quot; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It’s ironic that in the early 20th century China was trying to emulate the Western world, including increasing women’s rights, to get out from under the hand of the West, and Chinese Americans emulated those reforms going on in China and not in their own country because they were so excluded from American life that they felt a closer kinship to China. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it was interesting how the reasons why people decided it was a good idea for women to have an education in America paralleled the decision for Chinese women to become educated. On page 263 Yung writes, &amp;quot;Educated women make better wives and mothers; better wives and mothers make better families and citizens; better families and citizens make a stronger China.&amp;quot; Even though I don&amp;#039;t think this should be a number one reason for a woman to be given an education, at the time I would have been happy that women&amp;#039;s education and higher education was finally accepted. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Chinese Americans were witnessing freedoms in America that were not offered to them as Chinese Americans in America or China.  Binding the feet was an example of their oppression to that of their husband.  It’s interesting that binding of the feet was compared to binding of an American woman corset.  They felt education was the key to stop the oppression.  Chinese American lineage was to their home where their families were so they naturally felt the need to change things back at home.  --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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The CSYP was a very effective source to bringing light to the atrocities that Chinese American faced and the changes that needed to take place.  Chinese American women could speak out through these journals in order to reach out to others and make changes.  As Judy Yung noted though a lot did not read these articles, the news spread.  Women talk and share their thoughts with other woman evoking their spirit and that brings change for them. --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Interesting reading, yes--new information, not really, at least to me. Why is it ironic that China saw the way out of Western domination as its emulation? That mentality has been repeated throughout history, from the Egyptians adopting chariots to overthrow the Hyksos to Afghan and Iraqi insurgents being found with US manuals on unconventional warfare. Also, it would seem only natural that the suppression of entry into the political sphere of an immigrant population would foster the desire to interact with the mother country. An aside--my own use of that term, &amp;quot;mother country&amp;quot; fascinates me in that nations have almost always been characterized as feminine and wonder what that kind of gendered language indicates about the pervasiveness of such gendered dichotomies in everyday life. Other things I found &amp;quot;interesting&amp;quot;--the actions of politicians and probably most likely liberal-minded reformers from the Progressive Era directly contributed to the high rate of prostitution among Chinese women as they barred further immigration in California and other western states. Also found significant the direction that these women&amp;#039;s reform actions were aimed at--the revitalization of China as a nation, rather than the individualistic aims of many female reformers in America--kind of reminiscent of the African American women from the previous reading and their focus on universal rights etc. than their white female counterparts. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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The comparison between bound feet and corsets was very important.  Westerners are quick to judge bound feet for the horrible physical impact they had on women, but really, corsets were not any better.  They bent ribcages, moved organs around, etc.  My great grandmother still had to wear a corset long after they were out of fashion because her body was incapable of supporting itself anymore.  And in both the case of foot binding and corsets, while it&amp;#039;s true that men perpetuated the situation because of their ideas of what a beautiful woman should look like, women themselves were the ones to support the practices and get their daughters to do so as a sign of their femininity.   I think the author took too much of a black-and-white stance on the subject of foot binding, which as painful as it was, it was not simply a sign of the oppression of Chinese women by Chinese men.  That being said, it was important for Chinese women, both in China and America, to reject that tradition in order to begin to step out of their traditional roles.  - Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 1 – Visions of the New Woman ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Nellie Bly, Why go around the world, 1890&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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It is unfortunate that in order to prove that she was capable of doing something that was believed to only have been able to be done by a man she had to wear the same outfit for close to 3 months straight. That&amp;#039;s not masculine, it&amp;#039;s disgusting. This definitely was one of the most interesting documents that we had to read and I love that at the end she talked about how she packed too much, versus too little. It was like, in trying to prove that as a female she could do something she became an inspiration. It even still is pretty inspirational to me at least.                 -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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At first reading this article I initially thought, “How did Nellie think that she could actually do this in 1890? Was it even possible then?” Thinking more into it I can see why. She wanted to do something ambitious, that would make for a great story, but also make for a great experience, so why shouldn’t she as a woman be able to travel the world? Like Sarah, I feel bad that Nellie had to travel in one outfit for three months, but as she describes she is able to fit a good amount of clothing into her one hand-satchel, “two traveling caps…a pair of slippers, a dressing gown, tennis blazer…several changes of underwear,” (pg. 7). I would hope that priority number one would be the underwear. At the end of the article, I found that Nellie seems to indicate that she may have some sort of “baggage” in her life and I may be reading too much into it, but the way she speaks of the “the responsibilities and worries I escaped by not having a lot of trunks and boxes to look after,(pg. 7), seems to be a hidden meaning to her own emotional baggage.---Morgan M. &lt;br /&gt;
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Here is a woman ready to trek around the world, alone, with only the contents of a little bag. She has the gumption to convince her boss that she can make the trip, yet she still falls back on the idea that if she conducts herself &amp;#039;properly&amp;#039; she will &amp;quot;always find men ready to protect&amp;quot; (pg. 7) her. I don&amp;#039;t fault her for wanting this protection, travel always entails a certain degree of danger, but I do wonder at her assumptions as to what constitutes proper behavior. In making the trip, hasn&amp;#039;t she already broken several social norms concerning appropriate womanly conduct? And did she believe that men the world over would hold the same ideas about women and their behavior? What of her safety if her conduct was deemed improper? -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article really interesting because Nellie seems like a very independent and confident woman. That is why it was such a surprise to me that she quit journalism to marry a 72 year old man!! Perhaps she loved him, or maybe she thought that her job couldn&amp;#039;t last forever and she needed someone to support her? It did also say that she shed a few years off her age to make herself seem more youthful. Maybe there was a common thought in society that once a woman got too old, she wasn&amp;#039;t useful anymore. If that is true, then it must have been quite a strong societal expectation in order to get Nellie to stop what she loved doing. I think its also important to notice that Nellie had to stop her job when she got married. She obviously loved doing because she wanted to go back to it when her husband died, so there must have been some pressure on her to quit and spend her time being a wife. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also shocked at ther marriage to the rather old man, thats old today, so I&amp;#039;m sure back then that had to be quite an old guy.  I feel that Nellie is a perfect example of this New Woman, out embracing the world without a care or fear in the world, ready to tackle any man&amp;#039;s job. Good for her. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Here are the things that I found interesting in this primary document--for such a daring New Woman she seems awfully dependent on the chivalry of men. Example, &amp;quot;I knew if my conduct was proper I should always find men ready to protect me.&amp;quot; (7) So whether she had the outward trappings of the New Woman, she still thought in the same old traditional way that men are meant to protect women. Geez, we don&amp;#039;t see that today at all...outward trappings of independence and the concurrent maintenance of a traditional outlook on the behavior of men...double standard much? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Bertha Palmer: The Fair Women, Chicago, 1893&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I was actually surprised that Bertha Palmer used her speech at the World Fair to both honor women and criticise men&amp;#039;s attitudes towards women.  Women had been allowed a space at the Fair to display their own creativity, but it was within a well defined and controlled &amp;quot;sphere&amp;quot; designated by men.  With Palmer&amp;#039;s speech, we are getting to see a woman recognize the inequality of the separate spheres doctrine and publicly push for the inclusion of women in more than restrictive &amp;quot;spheres&amp;quot; constructed by men.  After all, how can a woman truly be free when she is being oppressed by men in all that she does? -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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The reasoning behind the creation of the women&amp;#039;s pavilion seem more in line with what I imagine to be the goals of feminists (8). Then again, the &amp;quot;acknowledgement&amp;quot; that the women credit men in the passage, that heretofore, men have been the sole contributors to humanity, etc etc seemed to dismiss or perhaps demonstrate ignorance of what women had accomplished throughout history. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Anna Cooper: Black Women Plan to Lead Their Race, 1892&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In the reading by Anna J. Cooper, “Black Women Plan to Lead Their Race,” I was surprised to find that African American women were a part of the club movement as much as white women. Though the clubs were separate, they paralleled each other. I think it is interesting that the reform movement was so big among black women because they were breaking out of their presumed role more so than white women because of their race. Not only did they have to worry about being women, but they also had to worry because they were black. During this time racism was an issue, and some would argue that these women should be worried about the advancement of their race rather than being part of the reform movement. However, Anna J. Cooper argues that (page 13) “To be a woman in such an age carries with it a privilege and an opportunity never implied before. But to be a woman of the Negro race in America, and to be able to grasp the deep significance of the possibilities of the crisis, is to have a heritage, it seems to me, unique in the ages.” In my opinion, Cooper believes that it is BECAUSE these women are black that they have the opportunity to make big changes. Being part of the reform movement seems to be a way for black women to seek opportunities that they may not have otherwise had. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I found that Cooper&amp;#039;s statement concerning what constituted equality--&amp;quot;without violence and without suing or special patronage then and there the whole Negro race enters with me,&amp;quot; and whether or not the Civil Rights movement and aftermath, accompanied with violence, court action and affirmative action corresponds with her vision of equality. On that note, what did she mean particularly by the exaggerated &amp;quot;importance of mere political advantage&amp;quot; (12)?&lt;br /&gt;
-schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ida B. Wells&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Virtue knows no colorline, and the CHIVALRY which depends upon the complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect.&amp;quot; (17)--what did Wells mean by chivalry? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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I think by using the word CHIVALRY Wells is just stressing the basic respect that should be shown between two humans, rather than just relationships between men and women.-MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Frances Willard&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;–&lt;br /&gt;
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The irony of a woman/feminist naming her bicycle, a possession, a thing, Gladys should mean something, unless I&amp;#039;m reading too much into her words. But then again, her description of how Gladys was a &amp;quot;mystery&amp;quot; and that she had &amp;quot;mastered&amp;quot; all her kinks and that she put a bridle in her mouth and whipped her in victory...all very masculine language directed towards a female object. Even if that object is an inanimate bicycle, Willard&amp;#039;s use of such blatantly gendered language merits some sort of analysis. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Anzia Yezierska&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Immigrant Daughter and the Possibilities of the New World&lt;br /&gt;
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Immigrant women like Anzia and her fictional heroine Sara faced unique challenges at the turn of the century. They were caught between the growing American emphasis on education and more independence for women and their tradition bound fathers and husbands. Men like Sara&amp;#039;s father in the reading probably saw their daughters&amp;#039; rebellious streaks as not only a threat to their patriarchal authority but also to the culture and customs they brought from their countries of origin. When immigrant daughters went to school or moved out on their own they joined an &amp;#039;American&amp;#039; movement that their parents may not have understood or feared for its ability to remove their daughters from an acceptably ethnic upbringing. -Mary Ann &lt;br /&gt;
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I strongly agree with Mary Ann, I think fathers especially immigrant fathers wanted the &amp;quot;American Dream&amp;quot; and felt that when they arrived it was hard to achieve so held onto the one stable condition they always knew as being heads of the household. Men, like Sara&amp;#039;s father used a different tactic to establish authority through the use of religion,&amp;quot;It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence.&amp;quot; (22) contradicting the idea in America where women were normally seen as morally superior.   This made me wonder if the influence of new religions and cultures in America helped bring about the women&amp;#039;s movement? Did statements such as the one Sara&amp;#039;s father made cause women to rebel more and prove they did not need a man nor his religion to survive. -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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The story of the Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska is an example of traditional values and norms crashing headfirst into a changing society.  As a man of God in their old country, Sara’s father would have been required to provide spiritual leadership to his community in exchange for food and shelter; but in America that is not the case.  Instead, he forces his family to sacrifice so that he can continue to focus completely on his religion.  Sara’s ability to break away from her father’s overbearing dominance also forces her to turn her back on her sisters and mother.  This conflict between generations was a prominent narrative at the turn of the century. – E Fritz  &lt;br /&gt;
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Sara&amp;#039;s assertion that America is nothing like the old country, and that in America she can do whatever she wants is a very interesting concept, coming from a woman. This was the assumption many immigrants coming to America although the reality of the situation oftentimes clashed violently with the ideal. That an immigrant female author would write in such glowing terms about the possibilities of being a woman in America should mean something, although I don&amp;#039;t know how the story ends and it is fiction. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Edith Eudora Ammons&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – A Woman Homesteader&lt;br /&gt;
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When I have pictured manifest destiny, I have hardly pictured Edith Ammons and her sister, two women, moving in to the West alone to build up new lives together.  Of course, I would never think of the West in the 19th century as a place of freedom and new beginnings because I know how rough it was from studying history.  Ammons herself admits, &amp;quot;This was not the West as I had dreamed it... It was a desolate, forgotten land, without vegetation save for the dry, crackling grass, without visible tokens of fertility&amp;quot; (p. 26).  Yet, the sisters toughed it out, taking on hardship after hardship in exchange for their freedom to live where they wanted and do what they wanted.  I think that with our comforts of today, it is often hard to imagine women putting themselves through such trials to achieve the freedom they desired. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 2 – Expanding Horizons for Educated Women ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Molly Dewson writes home from Wellesley (1894-96)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing I really liked about this story was how Molly talked about  how she struggled with her studies. I thought this was important because it shows that girls weren&amp;#039;t just sent away to learn how to become good wives, but they were actually taught things. They actually had to learn science and practice experiments. Molly seems like a completely modern college girl in the way she complains about her classes! She also talks about her social life quite openly. Girls were willing to dress up like boys in order to go out and have fun. Its nice to see that all girls of that period weren&amp;#039;t prim and proper like we are sometimes led to believe. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the first thing that struck me when reading this was the idea of &amp;quot;smashing&amp;quot;.  Did the intro to the letter say that it was acceptable for young women to fall in love with one another in college during that time period.  I find that hard to believe considering the fear of parents that their daughters would not be fit for marriage.  I also suppose that there might be some things missing from these letters, I mean I know I don&amp;#039;t tell my mom everything that I do at college. - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also thrown off by the mention of &amp;quot;smashing&amp;quot; was there also a period of time before the turn of the century where there was some sort of sexual liberation? Or was the idea of &amp;quot;smashing&amp;quot; something that was allowed in college as long as these affairs did not last after graduation. I was also impressed with the frank openness of Molly&amp;#039;s letters to her parents, especially when she talked about dressing up as a boy. Was this standard behavior for college girls? -Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Jane Addams discusses the early days of Hull House (1910)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In class we spoke some of this issue that the “New Woman” faced about what to do after leaving college. Here I found what Jane Addams and Ellen Starr do very admirable, such as creating the famous Hall House. In today’s world you don’t see many women, especially white, moving into “bad” parts of cities to truly help the people there. But these women I found fearless of being in Chicago such as the incident with them leaving the side door left open and “were much pleased in the morning to find that we possessed a fine illustration of the honesty and kindliness of our new neighbors,” (pg. 36). I would have been so upset that I had risked my home and self, just being in a new place for the first night is nerve-racking, but leaving a door open would make me even more paranoid. These women were actually asked to “wash the newborn babies, and to prepare the dead for burial, to nurse the sick, and to ‘mind the children’,” (pg. 36). Where there no others to do these tasks, such as a mortician, hospital, or baby-sitters? I know to remember that these people were of the poorest of the city, but these women were asked to prepare the dead, really? Ew.---Morgan M.  &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Alice Hamilton explores the dangerous trades (1943)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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The first piece of this article I saw was that it parallels to the Jane Addams Article in that Alice Hamilton spent time at the Hull House. In her writing Alice actually mentions the Hull House, other than her biography at the beginning stating that she had spent time there and that she truly learned something from her time at the Hull House gives more evidence to the fact of Jane creating something great. “Life at Hull-House had accustomed me to going straight to the homes of people whom I wished to learn something and talking to them in their own surroundings, where they have courage to speak out what is in their minds,” (pg. 39). The Hull House taught Alice how to relate to people and I can see this consideration being very important, essential, to her profession of being a physician. In addition to her being a physician I think that a certain level of arrogance blossomed as well. Alice tends to look down on people at times, but at the same time being understanding; an example being her take on the reason for immigrants to take jobs to support their families after coming to American; “of course they took the first job they could find and if it proved to be one that weakened and crippled them---well, that was their bad luck!” (pg. 39). I found this a bit uncharacteristic of the women who spent time in the Hull House, but that is entirely my take. I’m sure being a women physician is something to be quite proud of, but to look down on immigrants who you are caring for because they are trying to make the best of the life they have been dealt, seems a bit harsh. ---Morgan M.    &lt;br /&gt;
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I was so surprised with the statistic in the beginning of this article that said &amp;quot;around 1900 as many as one in five doctors were women, although that percentage would not be reached again until the 1970&amp;#039;s.&amp;quot; When did the switch happen? It seems that during the turn of the century, the opportunities for women experienced a brief moment of expansion before the doors were closed upon them again. I was impressed with the work that Alice Hamilton was able to accomplish, and was also horrified by her accounts of the devastating effects of poisonous materials in the workplace. I understand Morgans point about Hamilton coming off as very arrogant, however I think this type of attitude towards the poor was probably a characteristic of her upbringing most likely as a member of the middle or upper class. Even though Alice Hamilton did work towards finding a cure for diseases that afflicted the poor she may not necessarily feel that much warmth and compassion towards them. --Emma &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mamie Garvin Fields –Af-Am Women enter the Teaching profession (1983) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mary Ritter Beard – Women and progressive politics. (1915)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 4—Feminists, Anarchists, and Other Rebel Girls ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mother Jones and striking Colorado Mine workers (about 1903 strike)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed reading Mother Jones. Her writing is very strong and passionate, and its hard not to have emotions dredged up while reading about this strike. I found it interesting that she went and stayed with the families working in the mine to witness first-hand the hardships they endure. The conditions seemed to be not too far off of what miners dealt with in more recent times which is saddening. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Why did they call her Mother Jones? What did this say about the continued assumptions concerning the proper role of women in society, albeit a radicalized one? Love her take on women&amp;#039;s suffrage as a hobby of aristocratic women. A comment on her most enduring words--to not be ladylike...that implies that there was and will continue to be behavior that is classified as ladylike and unladylike...what does that mean about her own assumptions of where feminism would lead to? Concerning the actual text, I&amp;#039;m concerned about her attitude towards the constitutionality of laws. Her advocacy of violence as a means to correct what she sees as wrong is disconcerting. If more people with different opinions felt and acted the way she wanted, then we would end up without a government fairly soon. Aren&amp;#039;t there people who take her words to heart about using violence, but in a manner opposite what she would have wanted? For example, the bombing of abortion clinics? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte Perkins Gilman – a Feminist challenge to the privatized home&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading “A Feminist Challenge to the Privatized Home” I am fairly certain that Charlotte Perkins Gilman hated to cook. Perhaps it is because of some culinary incident that happened to her during her first marriage where she ended up going crazy and leaving her husband and child and eventually marrying her cousin. Regardless of what happened, she is obviously traumatized. She believes that people should live in their private homes or apartments, but should also have communal areas (such as a kitchen) as well, and this will pretty much solve all problems of the world. Gilman’s ideas are actually quite smart when you put aside some of her obvious biases. The separation of labor when it comes to housework is really smart and efficient. If women were able to choose what task they wanted to perform (cook, clean, etc.) and they just focused on that task, things would get done much faster and much better. According to Gilman, this would lead to a more productive society overall because women would have the time to use their minds. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Culinary misadventures aside, I&amp;#039;m curious about what people thought about &amp;quot;Motherhood is not a remote contingency, but the common duty and common glory of womanhood. If women did choose professions unsuitable to maternity, nature would quietly extinguish them by her unvarying process.&amp;quot; (80) Ignoring my penchant for finding gendered language and Gilman&amp;#039;s reference to nature as a woman (why, because nature provides and women produce children?) but her assertion that motherhood is the duty and glory of womanhood and that there are certain professions inherently not suitable for women, but if women want to do these things, then she can do so, it&amp;#039;s just that nature will off her in a hurry. So...in her mind there really is such a thing as jobs that women shouldn&amp;#039;t do, but should be able to try anyways? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Josephine Conger-Koneko – Wages for housework – 1913&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that it was interesting how Josephine Conger-Koneko believed so strongly that women should be payed for housework. I especially thought that it was interesting how she expected a woman&amp;#039;s husband&amp;#039;s boss to pay her for her house labor, as it was the woman who made it possible for the man to work. However, she brings about a point she never truly expands upon; although it was unusual, not every working man did marry eventually. What about these men? They still managed to attend work without a wife taking care of their home. And if Conger-Koneko received her wish and women were paid for their labor at home, should these men be paid double for attending work and for taking care of their home?&lt;br /&gt;
-Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article the most interesting out of all of them.  Josephine Conger-Koneko takes a very hard line on the position that women should be paid for their housework.  I also found it interesting how she equivocated a woman&amp;#039;s life in the home doing housework for her husband as the life of a slave.  She seems to be a bit radical in her discussion of women being paid for household duties.  I also found it striking that Koneko argues that a husband should go to his employer and ask for wages for his wife at home doing the housework and how men getting married is actually benefical more for the employer because then he will have a continuing work force. Did women during this time believe they should be paid for work, and if after reading this, did woman&amp;#039;s groups advocate paid labor for women working in the home?  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Margaret Sanger’s epiphany over birth control – 1936&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this particular article. I like how Sanger used a personal story to make birth control, which was typically thought of as a female issue, a family and medical issue. By bringing in the husband and children of Sadie Sachs, Sanger made it obvious that the situation didn&amp;#039;t just affect the mother, but her family as well. She also reflected what a desperate situation it truly was to have another mouth to feed in a poor, working class family. I also liked how she illustrated the point that many men were irresponsible about birth control, so it should be up to the responsible woman to decide whether or not she should have a child. -Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the Sanger article was very interesting.  I like how Sanger is able to use the story of Mrs. Sachs to show the rising need and importance for birth control.  I think it presents birth control as more of a social issue, rather than just an issue of liberating woman&amp;#039;s sexuality.  She demonstrates that birth control is a necessity because of all the hurt, poverty and death that is occurring due to a lack  of birth control.  At this time, one had to have enough money for doctors who they could pay to tell them about birth control options/abortion due to the Comstock Laws, and I think this is important for why Sanger decides to advocate birth control, especially to the poorer classes.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the novelty of birth control and it&amp;#039;s practices were particularly interesting during this time period.  It was a process which was becoming more widely popularized because it was directly connected to women&amp;#039;s growing independence from men.  I agree with the fact that birth control began to empower women because it allowed them to choose weather or not they wanted to get pregnant, whereas previously they were almost forced into sex.  I think Sanger was wise in attempting to make birth control a more medical issue , but I also think it has feminist elements because it was able to empower women to make more significant sexual decisions.-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Sanger was an insanely intelligent woman for using the Sachs family as a part of her argument. Rather than allowing for men (and women too) to scrutinize women for their decision to use birth control. She leaves some of the responsibility up to the men, by showing how it is relevant to their lives too.--MDvora&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Emma Goldman – A Radical view of women’s emancipation – 1911&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked this article because it reflects upon the push made by female activists towards the real freedoms they desired. Emma Goldman criticizes the &amp;quot;superficial goals of the modern woman&amp;#039;s movement,&amp;quot; and expresses that &amp;quot;True emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts...it begins in woman&amp;#039;s soul&amp;quot; (MAW 89). She also expresses that women do have the ability to shape or direct their own destiny. After reading a quote from page 90 where she said, &amp;quot;how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office?&amp;quot; it reminded me of when slaves first got their freedom. They were free but not at all equal in social or economic status. With women gaining suffrage they gained the opportunities men held but they were still limited by sexual discrimination.   -David Fitch&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_4_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 4 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_4_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-02-04T04:03:42Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Chapter 2 – Expanding Horizons for Educated Women */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Linda Gordon, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women’s Welfare Activism, 1890-1945” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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On page 23 Linda Gordon states that &amp;quot;Black welfare reformers were more concerned to combine the development of protective institutions for women with an antirape discourse. Among whites, rape was not an important topic of discussion during this period, and in protective work for women and girls, male sexuality was treated as natural and irrepressible&amp;quot; and I understand that the times were completely different but how did society of the time use this to justify rape? Infidelity and Adultery I could possibly understand this being used, but not rape. She even uses the word &amp;quot;girls&amp;quot; which to me suggests children. Was it still okay then? From the rest of the document by Linda Gordon I also take it that everything that is wrong with the welfare reform system today was put in place by the white reformers--Maybe they should have left the social work up to the Black reformers?   -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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The welfare activism article notes that a fair amount of the black women involved in welfare were married, and it was more generally acceptable for black women to be involved in public life than white women, which I suppose is partly due to their positions as heads of families during slavery’s heyday and the fact that many black women had to work outside the home due to economic necessity (except these reform women who were pretty well off). However, Anna J. Cooper seemed to believe that black men were not supportive of women outside the home and didn’t recognize their value in politics and reform. What accounts for this disparity? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was cool how even though black women may not have had the advantages that white women had in the reform movement, they made the best out of it. White women raised money but they also were able to gain support or recognition from people in congress. Black women were not so fortunate but they did not let that stop them; they had bake sales, church dinners, and other such functions to raise money and awareness. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Amy, I noticed the differences between how black and white women raised money for their causes. It seems like white women relied far more on their status and privilege to gain access to (mostly white men) policy makers and other influential leaders who could help them. Black women, for the most part, did not have this option. So they turned to their communities for support, in much the same way as they had turned voting and politics into community activities. Black women already had a solid tradition of getting the community to rally around them for a cause, so when the need arose for schools and public health measures and other programs, women again banded to together for the good of the group as a whole. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann&amp;#039;s observations on how the different races raised money, awareness, and support. It should be expected that white women primarily relied upon their race and social status because those are integral parts of their society. Black women, however, were all looked down upon, and seen as having the same roots. They were all seen as inferior, and many seen as ex-slaves or children of slaves, solely because of their race. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the most intriguing part, and yet a short piece, of Linda Gordon’s article to be on the Lesbianism and homosexual escapades. Different from black women’s dependence on their community and occasionally their husbands, white women greatly relied on one-another rather than their husbands or families. “The great majority of white women were single-34 percent had ever been married, and only 18 percent remained married during their peak political activity,” (pg. 229). To this effect women Gordon gives the fact that “28 percent were in relationships with other women…called Boston marriages,” (pg. 229). I think that we as a generation think that Lesbianism is a new trend/ideal, and yet these women were practicing it in the 18th-19th century. This was probably not seen as a controversial idea to these women, so why is it such a big issue today when is a part of history? ---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t believe that rape was ever &amp;quot;justified&amp;quot; by anyone, and it has always been seen as a barbarism, even when it was performed ritualistically by warring states. Just because a society&amp;#039;s dialogue doesn&amp;#039;t include rape doesn&amp;#039;t mean that it was accepted, by any means. Also, to encapsulate human nature as such is not a dismissal, as is evident even in our so-enlightened society when we &amp;quot;dismiss&amp;quot; the actions of men that is at times chauvinistic or derogatory as &amp;quot;boys will be boys&amp;quot;--does that mean that such behavior, speaking in broad terms, justified? I would think no. Also, while it seems as though black women did not have the kind of access to politicized power as white women did, Gordon points out, perhaps in contradiction to some of her conclusions, that half of the African American women who were married (85%) had influential husbands. I don&amp;#039;t really see much difference between what the African American women did in comparison to WASP women, despite Gordon&amp;#039;s attempts to highlight them. To me, it seems as though the only thing that really differed, notwithstanding the race issue (which I&amp;#039;m not dismissing), was the time that had elapsed between emancipation and what was then contemporary times. Like WASP women&amp;#039;s groups, black women&amp;#039;s societies were exclusionary, and it seems that if a few more generations had elapsed then the black women would be just as focused on maintaining social hierarchies as white women were. Perhaps they&amp;#039;re concentration in the rural South maintained this as immigrants seldom ventured South and therefore black women would not have a class of &amp;quot;others&amp;quot; to perform activism on. But then again the entire African American community was persecuted against so I&amp;#039;m sure it&amp;#039;s not as simplistic as that. I found the &amp;quot;white view&amp;quot; as a class issue, which I agree with and that the WASP women who were single and had a great deal of autonomy assumed that this was a class privilege and something that would not be desirable for poorer women.       -schang &lt;br /&gt;
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While I agree with the comments above noticing the differences between black and white women&amp;#039;s approaches to fundraising I found interesting how they worked together as well. According to the article women seemed to be the ringleaders not only for rights for themselves but for equality by working together against race riots, ie. Chicago 1919 p. 224. Even more interesting were women in the South working together, where they suffered racial violence constantly. It was not common to see women of both races working together for a cause but both races had common interests, each was under the domestic sphere and both had to fight for not only themselves but generations to come. I did think the way black women worked together was more effective, even without government support they were able to come together without the support of men and build a bond through sisterhood and charity. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the information presented in this article regarding the priorities of black women and their focus on education was revealing.  On page 225, Gordon points out that “education was the single most important area of activism for black women”.  It makes sense that this would be the case, but I would have guessed that issues of equality would have outranked education as the primary concern. –E Fritz&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems almost like black and white women were working towards two entirely different goals.  White women were working towards recognition and forming different groups such as the YWCA.  But they were either excluding these black women, or they were being excluded by society.  It is hard to beleive that blacks were even being lynched in the 20th century.  The push for women&amp;#039;s rights for whites seems to be taking much greater strides than for blacks because of the intense segregation.  I feel for the black women more so than white women because they were forced to go through many more difficult hardships for not only civil, but also women&amp;#039;s rights.-afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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== Judy Yung, &amp;quot;The Social Awakening of Chinese American Women as Reported in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chung Sai Yat Po&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1900-1911&amp;quot; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It’s ironic that in the early 20th century China was trying to emulate the Western world, including increasing women’s rights, to get out from under the hand of the West, and Chinese Americans emulated those reforms going on in China and not in their own country because they were so excluded from American life that they felt a closer kinship to China. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it was interesting how the reasons why people decided it was a good idea for women to have an education in America paralleled the decision for Chinese women to become educated. On page 263 Yung writes, &amp;quot;Educated women make better wives and mothers; better wives and mothers make better families and citizens; better families and citizens make a stronger China.&amp;quot; Even though I don&amp;#039;t think this should be a number one reason for a woman to be given an education, at the time I would have been happy that women&amp;#039;s education and higher education was finally accepted. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Chinese Americans were witnessing freedoms in America that were not offered to them as Chinese Americans in America or China.  Binding the feet was an example of their oppression to that of their husband.  It’s interesting that binding of the feet was compared to binding of an American woman corset.  They felt education was the key to stop the oppression.  Chinese American lineage was to their home where their families were so they naturally felt the need to change things back at home.  --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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The CSYP was a very effective source to bringing light to the atrocities that Chinese American faced and the changes that needed to take place.  Chinese American women could speak out through these journals in order to reach out to others and make changes.  As Judy Yung noted though a lot did not read these articles, the news spread.  Women talk and share their thoughts with other woman evoking their spirit and that brings change for them. --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Interesting reading, yes--new information, not really, at least to me. Why is it ironic that China saw the way out of Western domination as its emulation? That mentality has been repeated throughout history, from the Egyptians adopting chariots to overthrow the Hyksos to Afghan and Iraqi insurgents being found with US manuals on unconventional warfare. Also, it would seem only natural that the suppression of entry into the political sphere of an immigrant population would foster the desire to interact with the mother country. An aside--my own use of that term, &amp;quot;mother country&amp;quot; fascinates me in that nations have almost always been characterized as feminine and wonder what that kind of gendered language indicates about the pervasiveness of such gendered dichotomies in everyday life. Other things I found &amp;quot;interesting&amp;quot;--the actions of politicians and probably most likely liberal-minded reformers from the Progressive Era directly contributed to the high rate of prostitution among Chinese women as they barred further immigration in California and other western states. Also found significant the direction that these women&amp;#039;s reform actions were aimed at--the revitalization of China as a nation, rather than the individualistic aims of many female reformers in America--kind of reminiscent of the African American women from the previous reading and their focus on universal rights etc. than their white female counterparts. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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The comparison between bound feet and corsets was very important.  Westerners are quick to judge bound feet for the horrible physical impact they had on women, but really, corsets were not any better.  They bent ribcages, moved organs around, etc.  My great grandmother still had to wear a corset long after they were out of fashion because her body was incapable of supporting itself anymore.  And in both the case of foot binding and corsets, while it&amp;#039;s true that men perpetuated the situation because of their ideas of what a beautiful woman should look like, women themselves were the ones to support the practices and get their daughters to do so as a sign of their femininity.   I think the author took too much of a black-and-white stance on the subject of foot binding, which as painful as it was, it was not simply a sign of the oppression of Chinese women by Chinese men.  That being said, it was important for Chinese women, both in China and America, to reject that tradition in order to begin to step out of their traditional roles.  - Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 1 – Visions of the New Woman ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Nellie Bly, Why go around the world, 1890&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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It is unfortunate that in order to prove that she was capable of doing something that was believed to only have been able to be done by a man she had to wear the same outfit for close to 3 months straight. That&amp;#039;s not masculine, it&amp;#039;s disgusting. This definitely was one of the most interesting documents that we had to read and I love that at the end she talked about how she packed too much, versus too little. It was like, in trying to prove that as a female she could do something she became an inspiration. It even still is pretty inspirational to me at least.                 -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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At first reading this article I initially thought, “How did Nellie think that she could actually do this in 1890? Was it even possible then?” Thinking more into it I can see why. She wanted to do something ambitious, that would make for a great story, but also make for a great experience, so why shouldn’t she as a woman be able to travel the world? Like Sarah, I feel bad that Nellie had to travel in one outfit for three months, but as she describes she is able to fit a good amount of clothing into her one hand-satchel, “two traveling caps…a pair of slippers, a dressing gown, tennis blazer…several changes of underwear,” (pg. 7). I would hope that priority number one would be the underwear. At the end of the article, I found that Nellie seems to indicate that she may have some sort of “baggage” in her life and I may be reading too much into it, but the way she speaks of the “the responsibilities and worries I escaped by not having a lot of trunks and boxes to look after,(pg. 7), seems to be a hidden meaning to her own emotional baggage.---Morgan M. &lt;br /&gt;
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Here is a woman ready to trek around the world, alone, with only the contents of a little bag. She has the gumption to convince her boss that she can make the trip, yet she still falls back on the idea that if she conducts herself &amp;#039;properly&amp;#039; she will &amp;quot;always find men ready to protect&amp;quot; (pg. 7) her. I don&amp;#039;t fault her for wanting this protection, travel always entails a certain degree of danger, but I do wonder at her assumptions as to what constitutes proper behavior. In making the trip, hasn&amp;#039;t she already broken several social norms concerning appropriate womanly conduct? And did she believe that men the world over would hold the same ideas about women and their behavior? What of her safety if her conduct was deemed improper? -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article really interesting because Nellie seems like a very independent and confident woman. That is why it was such a surprise to me that she quit journalism to marry a 72 year old man!! Perhaps she loved him, or maybe she thought that her job couldn&amp;#039;t last forever and she needed someone to support her? It did also say that she shed a few years off her age to make herself seem more youthful. Maybe there was a common thought in society that once a woman got too old, she wasn&amp;#039;t useful anymore. If that is true, then it must have been quite a strong societal expectation in order to get Nellie to stop what she loved doing. I think its also important to notice that Nellie had to stop her job when she got married. She obviously loved doing because she wanted to go back to it when her husband died, so there must have been some pressure on her to quit and spend her time being a wife. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also shocked at ther marriage to the rather old man, thats old today, so I&amp;#039;m sure back then that had to be quite an old guy.  I feel that Nellie is a perfect example of this New Woman, out embracing the world without a care or fear in the world, ready to tackle any man&amp;#039;s job. Good for her. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Here are the things that I found interesting in this primary document--for such a daring New Woman she seems awfully dependent on the chivalry of men. Example, &amp;quot;I knew if my conduct was proper I should always find men ready to protect me.&amp;quot; (7) So whether she had the outward trappings of the New Woman, she still thought in the same old traditional way that men are meant to protect women. Geez, we don&amp;#039;t see that today at all...outward trappings of independence and the concurrent maintenance of a traditional outlook on the behavior of men...double standard much? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Bertha Palmer: The Fair Women, Chicago, 1893&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I was actually surprised that Bertha Palmer used her speech at the World Fair to both honor women and criticise men&amp;#039;s attitudes towards women.  Women had been allowed a space at the Fair to display their own creativity, but it was within a well defined and controlled &amp;quot;sphere&amp;quot; designated by men.  With Palmer&amp;#039;s speech, we are getting to see a woman recognize the inequality of the separate spheres doctrine and publicly push for the inclusion of women in more than restrictive &amp;quot;spheres&amp;quot; constructed by men.  After all, how can a woman truly be free when she is being oppressed by men in all that she does? -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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The reasoning behind the creation of the women&amp;#039;s pavilion seem more in line with what I imagine to be the goals of feminists (8). Then again, the &amp;quot;acknowledgement&amp;quot; that the women credit men in the passage, that heretofore, men have been the sole contributors to humanity, etc etc seemed to dismiss or perhaps demonstrate ignorance of what women had accomplished throughout history. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Anna Cooper: Black Women Plan to Lead Their Race, 1892&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In the reading by Anna J. Cooper, “Black Women Plan to Lead Their Race,” I was surprised to find that African American women were a part of the club movement as much as white women. Though the clubs were separate, they paralleled each other. I think it is interesting that the reform movement was so big among black women because they were breaking out of their presumed role more so than white women because of their race. Not only did they have to worry about being women, but they also had to worry because they were black. During this time racism was an issue, and some would argue that these women should be worried about the advancement of their race rather than being part of the reform movement. However, Anna J. Cooper argues that (page 13) “To be a woman in such an age carries with it a privilege and an opportunity never implied before. But to be a woman of the Negro race in America, and to be able to grasp the deep significance of the possibilities of the crisis, is to have a heritage, it seems to me, unique in the ages.” In my opinion, Cooper believes that it is BECAUSE these women are black that they have the opportunity to make big changes. Being part of the reform movement seems to be a way for black women to seek opportunities that they may not have otherwise had. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I found that Cooper&amp;#039;s statement concerning what constituted equality--&amp;quot;without violence and without suing or special patronage then and there the whole Negro race enters with me,&amp;quot; and whether or not the Civil Rights movement and aftermath, accompanied with violence, court action and affirmative action corresponds with her vision of equality. On that note, what did she mean particularly by the exaggerated &amp;quot;importance of mere political advantage&amp;quot; (12)?&lt;br /&gt;
-schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ida B. Wells&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Virtue knows no colorline, and the CHIVALRY which depends upon the complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect.&amp;quot; (17)--what did Wells mean by chivalry? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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I think by using the word CHIVALRY Wells is just stressing the basic respect that should be shown between two humans, rather than just relationships between men and women.-MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Frances Willard&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;–&lt;br /&gt;
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The irony of a woman/feminist naming her bicycle, a possession, a thing, Gladys should mean something, unless I&amp;#039;m reading too much into her words. But then again, her description of how Gladys was a &amp;quot;mystery&amp;quot; and that she had &amp;quot;mastered&amp;quot; all her kinks and that she put a bridle in her mouth and whipped her in victory...all very masculine language directed towards a female object. Even if that object is an inanimate bicycle, Willard&amp;#039;s use of such blatantly gendered language merits some sort of analysis. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Anzia Yezierska&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Immigrant Daughter and the Possibilities of the New World&lt;br /&gt;
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Immigrant women like Anzia and her fictional heroine Sara faced unique challenges at the turn of the century. They were caught between the growing American emphasis on education and more independence for women and their tradition bound fathers and husbands. Men like Sara&amp;#039;s father in the reading probably saw their daughters&amp;#039; rebellious streaks as not only a threat to their patriarchal authority but also to the culture and customs they brought from their countries of origin. When immigrant daughters went to school or moved out on their own they joined an &amp;#039;American&amp;#039; movement that their parents may not have understood or feared for its ability to remove their daughters from an acceptably ethnic upbringing. -Mary Ann &lt;br /&gt;
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I strongly agree with Mary Ann, I think fathers especially immigrant fathers wanted the &amp;quot;American Dream&amp;quot; and felt that when they arrived it was hard to achieve so held onto the one stable condition they always knew as being heads of the household. Men, like Sara&amp;#039;s father used a different tactic to establish authority through the use of religion,&amp;quot;It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence.&amp;quot; (22) contradicting the idea in America where women were normally seen as morally superior.   This made me wonder if the influence of new religions and cultures in America helped bring about the women&amp;#039;s movement? Did statements such as the one Sara&amp;#039;s father made cause women to rebel more and prove they did not need a man nor his religion to survive. -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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The story of the Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska is an example of traditional values and norms crashing headfirst into a changing society.  As a man of God in their old country, Sara’s father would have been required to provide spiritual leadership to his community in exchange for food and shelter; but in America that is not the case.  Instead, he forces his family to sacrifice so that he can continue to focus completely on his religion.  Sara’s ability to break away from her father’s overbearing dominance also forces her to turn her back on her sisters and mother.  This conflict between generations was a prominent narrative at the turn of the century. – E Fritz  &lt;br /&gt;
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Sara&amp;#039;s assertion that America is nothing like the old country, and that in America she can do whatever she wants is a very interesting concept, coming from a woman. This was the assumption many immigrants coming to America although the reality of the situation oftentimes clashed violently with the ideal. That an immigrant female author would write in such glowing terms about the possibilities of being a woman in America should mean something, although I don&amp;#039;t know how the story ends and it is fiction. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Edith Eudora Ammons&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – A Woman Homesteader&lt;br /&gt;
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When I have pictured manifest destiny, I have hardly pictured Edith Ammons and her sister, two women, moving in to the West alone to build up new lives together.  Of course, I would never think of the West in the 19th century as a place of freedom and new beginnings because I know how rough it was from studying history.  Ammons herself admits, &amp;quot;This was not the West as I had dreamed it... It was a desolate, forgotten land, without vegetation save for the dry, crackling grass, without visible tokens of fertility&amp;quot; (p. 26).  Yet, the sisters toughed it out, taking on hardship after hardship in exchange for their freedom to live where they wanted and do what they wanted.  I think that with our comforts of today, it is often hard to imagine women putting themselves through such trials to achieve the freedom they desired. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 2 – Expanding Horizons for Educated Women ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Molly Dewson writes home from Wellesley (1894-96)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing I really liked about this story was how Molly talked about  how she struggled with her studies. I thought this was important because it shows that girls weren&amp;#039;t just sent away to learn how to become good wives, but they were actually taught things. They actually had to learn science and practice experiments. Molly seems like a completely modern college girl in the way she complains about her classes! She also talks about her social life quite openly. Girls were willing to dress up like boys in order to go out and have fun. Its nice to see that all girls of that period weren&amp;#039;t prim and proper like we are sometimes led to believe. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the first thing that struck me when reading this was the idea of &amp;quot;smashing&amp;quot;.  Did the intro to the letter say that it was acceptable for young women to fall in love with one another in college during that time period.  I find that hard to believe considering the fear of parents that their daughters would not be fit for marriage.  I also suppose that there might be some things missing from these letters, I mean I know I don&amp;#039;t tell my mom everything that I do at college. - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Jane Addams discusses the early days of Hull House (1910)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In class we spoke some of this issue that the “New Woman” faced about what to do after leaving college. Here I found what Jane Addams and Ellen Starr do very admirable, such as creating the famous Hall House. In today’s world you don’t see many women, especially white, moving into “bad” parts of cities to truly help the people there. But these women I found fearless of being in Chicago such as the incident with them leaving the side door left open and “were much pleased in the morning to find that we possessed a fine illustration of the honesty and kindliness of our new neighbors,” (pg. 36). I would have been so upset that I had risked my home and self, just being in a new place for the first night is nerve-racking, but leaving a door open would make me even more paranoid. These women were actually asked to “wash the newborn babies, and to prepare the dead for burial, to nurse the sick, and to ‘mind the children’,” (pg. 36). Where there no others to do these tasks, such as a mortician, hospital, or baby-sitters? I know to remember that these people were of the poorest of the city, but these women were asked to prepare the dead, really? Ew.---Morgan M.  &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Alice Hamilton explores the dangerous trades (1943)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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The first piece of this article I saw was that it parallels to the Jane Addams Article in that Alice Hamilton spent time at the Hull House. In her writing Alice actually mentions the Hull House, other than her biography at the beginning stating that she had spent time there and that she truly learned something from her time at the Hull House gives more evidence to the fact of Jane creating something great. “Life at Hull-House had accustomed me to going straight to the homes of people whom I wished to learn something and talking to them in their own surroundings, where they have courage to speak out what is in their minds,” (pg. 39). The Hull House taught Alice how to relate to people and I can see this consideration being very important, essential, to her profession of being a physician. In addition to her being a physician I think that a certain level of arrogance blossomed as well. Alice tends to look down on people at times, but at the same time being understanding; an example being her take on the reason for immigrants to take jobs to support their families after coming to American; “of course they took the first job they could find and if it proved to be one that weakened and crippled them---well, that was their bad luck!” (pg. 39). I found this a bit uncharacteristic of the women who spent time in the Hull House, but that is entirely my take. I’m sure being a women physician is something to be quite proud of, but to look down on immigrants who you are caring for because they are trying to make the best of the life they have been dealt, seems a bit harsh. ---Morgan M.    &lt;br /&gt;
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I was so surprised with the statistic in the beginning of this article that said &amp;quot;around 1900 as many as one in five doctors were women, although that percentage would not be reached again until the 1970&amp;#039;s.&amp;quot; When did the switch happen? It seems that during the turn of the century, the opportunities for women experienced a brief moment of expansion before the doors were closed upon them again. I was impressed with the work that Alice Hamilton was able to accomplish, and was also horrified by her accounts of the devastating effects of poisonous materials in the workplace. I understand Morgans point about Hamilton coming off as very arrogant, however I think this type of attitude towards the poor was probably a characteristic of her upbringing most likely as a member of the middle or upper class. Even though Alice Hamilton did work towards finding a cure for diseases that afflicted the poor she may not necessarily feel that much warmth and compassion towards them. --Emma &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mamie Garvin Fields –Af-Am Women enter the Teaching profession (1983) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mary Ritter Beard – Women and progressive politics. (1915)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 4—Feminists, Anarchists, and Other Rebel Girls ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mother Jones and striking Colorado Mine workers (about 1903 strike)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed reading Mother Jones. Her writing is very strong and passionate, and its hard not to have emotions dredged up while reading about this strike. I found it interesting that she went and stayed with the families working in the mine to witness first-hand the hardships they endure. The conditions seemed to be not too far off of what miners dealt with in more recent times which is saddening. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Why did they call her Mother Jones? What did this say about the continued assumptions concerning the proper role of women in society, albeit a radicalized one? Love her take on women&amp;#039;s suffrage as a hobby of aristocratic women. A comment on her most enduring words--to not be ladylike...that implies that there was and will continue to be behavior that is classified as ladylike and unladylike...what does that mean about her own assumptions of where feminism would lead to? Concerning the actual text, I&amp;#039;m concerned about her attitude towards the constitutionality of laws. Her advocacy of violence as a means to correct what she sees as wrong is disconcerting. If more people with different opinions felt and acted the way she wanted, then we would end up without a government fairly soon. Aren&amp;#039;t there people who take her words to heart about using violence, but in a manner opposite what she would have wanted? For example, the bombing of abortion clinics? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte Perkins Gilman – a Feminist challenge to the privatized home&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading “A Feminist Challenge to the Privatized Home” I am fairly certain that Charlotte Perkins Gilman hated to cook. Perhaps it is because of some culinary incident that happened to her during her first marriage where she ended up going crazy and leaving her husband and child and eventually marrying her cousin. Regardless of what happened, she is obviously traumatized. She believes that people should live in their private homes or apartments, but should also have communal areas (such as a kitchen) as well, and this will pretty much solve all problems of the world. Gilman’s ideas are actually quite smart when you put aside some of her obvious biases. The separation of labor when it comes to housework is really smart and efficient. If women were able to choose what task they wanted to perform (cook, clean, etc.) and they just focused on that task, things would get done much faster and much better. According to Gilman, this would lead to a more productive society overall because women would have the time to use their minds. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Culinary misadventures aside, I&amp;#039;m curious about what people thought about &amp;quot;Motherhood is not a remote contingency, but the common duty and common glory of womanhood. If women did choose professions unsuitable to maternity, nature would quietly extinguish them by her unvarying process.&amp;quot; (80) Ignoring my penchant for finding gendered language and Gilman&amp;#039;s reference to nature as a woman (why, because nature provides and women produce children?) but her assertion that motherhood is the duty and glory of womanhood and that there are certain professions inherently not suitable for women, but if women want to do these things, then she can do so, it&amp;#039;s just that nature will off her in a hurry. So...in her mind there really is such a thing as jobs that women shouldn&amp;#039;t do, but should be able to try anyways? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Josephine Conger-Koneko – Wages for housework – 1913&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that it was interesting how Josephine Conger-Koneko believed so strongly that women should be payed for housework. I especially thought that it was interesting how she expected a woman&amp;#039;s husband&amp;#039;s boss to pay her for her house labor, as it was the woman who made it possible for the man to work. However, she brings about a point she never truly expands upon; although it was unusual, not every working man did marry eventually. What about these men? They still managed to attend work without a wife taking care of their home. And if Conger-Koneko received her wish and women were paid for their labor at home, should these men be paid double for attending work and for taking care of their home?&lt;br /&gt;
-Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article the most interesting out of all of them.  Josephine Conger-Koneko takes a very hard line on the position that women should be paid for their housework.  I also found it interesting how she equivocated a woman&amp;#039;s life in the home doing housework for her husband as the life of a slave.  She seems to be a bit radical in her discussion of women being paid for household duties.  I also found it striking that Koneko argues that a husband should go to his employer and ask for wages for his wife at home doing the housework and how men getting married is actually benefical more for the employer because then he will have a continuing work force. Did women during this time believe they should be paid for work, and if after reading this, did woman&amp;#039;s groups advocate paid labor for women working in the home?  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Margaret Sanger’s epiphany over birth control – 1936&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this particular article. I like how Sanger used a personal story to make birth control, which was typically thought of as a female issue, a family and medical issue. By bringing in the husband and children of Sadie Sachs, Sanger made it obvious that the situation didn&amp;#039;t just affect the mother, but her family as well. She also reflected what a desperate situation it truly was to have another mouth to feed in a poor, working class family. I also liked how she illustrated the point that many men were irresponsible about birth control, so it should be up to the responsible woman to decide whether or not she should have a child. -Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the Sanger article was very interesting.  I like how Sanger is able to use the story of Mrs. Sachs to show the rising need and importance for birth control.  I think it presents birth control as more of a social issue, rather than just an issue of liberating woman&amp;#039;s sexuality.  She demonstrates that birth control is a necessity because of all the hurt, poverty and death that is occurring due to a lack  of birth control.  At this time, one had to have enough money for doctors who they could pay to tell them about birth control options/abortion due to the Comstock Laws, and I think this is important for why Sanger decides to advocate birth control, especially to the poorer classes.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the novelty of birth control and it&amp;#039;s practices were particularly interesting during this time period.  It was a process which was becoming more widely popularized because it was directly connected to women&amp;#039;s growing independence from men.  I agree with the fact that birth control began to empower women because it allowed them to choose weather or not they wanted to get pregnant, whereas previously they were almost forced into sex.  I think Sanger was wise in attempting to make birth control a more medical issue , but I also think it has feminist elements because it was able to empower women to make more significant sexual decisions.-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Sanger was an insanely intelligent woman for using the Sachs family as a part of her argument. Rather than allowing for men (and women too) to scrutinize women for their decision to use birth control. She leaves some of the responsibility up to the men, by showing how it is relevant to their lives too.--MDvora&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Emma Goldman – A Radical view of women’s emancipation – 1911&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked this article because it reflects upon the push made by female activists towards the real freedoms they desired. Emma Goldman criticizes the &amp;quot;superficial goals of the modern woman&amp;#039;s movement,&amp;quot; and expresses that &amp;quot;True emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts...it begins in woman&amp;#039;s soul&amp;quot; (MAW 89). She also expresses that women do have the ability to shape or direct their own destiny. After reading a quote from page 90 where she said, &amp;quot;how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office?&amp;quot; it reminded me of when slaves first got their freedom. They were free but not at all equal in social or economic status. With women gaining suffrage they gained the opportunities men held but they were still limited by sexual discrimination.   -David Fitch&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_4_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 4 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_4_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-02-04T04:03:05Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Chapter 2 – Expanding Horizons for Educated Women */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Linda Gordon, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women’s Welfare Activism, 1890-1945” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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On page 23 Linda Gordon states that &amp;quot;Black welfare reformers were more concerned to combine the development of protective institutions for women with an antirape discourse. Among whites, rape was not an important topic of discussion during this period, and in protective work for women and girls, male sexuality was treated as natural and irrepressible&amp;quot; and I understand that the times were completely different but how did society of the time use this to justify rape? Infidelity and Adultery I could possibly understand this being used, but not rape. She even uses the word &amp;quot;girls&amp;quot; which to me suggests children. Was it still okay then? From the rest of the document by Linda Gordon I also take it that everything that is wrong with the welfare reform system today was put in place by the white reformers--Maybe they should have left the social work up to the Black reformers?   -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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The welfare activism article notes that a fair amount of the black women involved in welfare were married, and it was more generally acceptable for black women to be involved in public life than white women, which I suppose is partly due to their positions as heads of families during slavery’s heyday and the fact that many black women had to work outside the home due to economic necessity (except these reform women who were pretty well off). However, Anna J. Cooper seemed to believe that black men were not supportive of women outside the home and didn’t recognize their value in politics and reform. What accounts for this disparity? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was cool how even though black women may not have had the advantages that white women had in the reform movement, they made the best out of it. White women raised money but they also were able to gain support or recognition from people in congress. Black women were not so fortunate but they did not let that stop them; they had bake sales, church dinners, and other such functions to raise money and awareness. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Amy, I noticed the differences between how black and white women raised money for their causes. It seems like white women relied far more on their status and privilege to gain access to (mostly white men) policy makers and other influential leaders who could help them. Black women, for the most part, did not have this option. So they turned to their communities for support, in much the same way as they had turned voting and politics into community activities. Black women already had a solid tradition of getting the community to rally around them for a cause, so when the need arose for schools and public health measures and other programs, women again banded to together for the good of the group as a whole. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Mary Ann&amp;#039;s observations on how the different races raised money, awareness, and support. It should be expected that white women primarily relied upon their race and social status because those are integral parts of their society. Black women, however, were all looked down upon, and seen as having the same roots. They were all seen as inferior, and many seen as ex-slaves or children of slaves, solely because of their race. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the most intriguing part, and yet a short piece, of Linda Gordon’s article to be on the Lesbianism and homosexual escapades. Different from black women’s dependence on their community and occasionally their husbands, white women greatly relied on one-another rather than their husbands or families. “The great majority of white women were single-34 percent had ever been married, and only 18 percent remained married during their peak political activity,” (pg. 229). To this effect women Gordon gives the fact that “28 percent were in relationships with other women…called Boston marriages,” (pg. 229). I think that we as a generation think that Lesbianism is a new trend/ideal, and yet these women were practicing it in the 18th-19th century. This was probably not seen as a controversial idea to these women, so why is it such a big issue today when is a part of history? ---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t believe that rape was ever &amp;quot;justified&amp;quot; by anyone, and it has always been seen as a barbarism, even when it was performed ritualistically by warring states. Just because a society&amp;#039;s dialogue doesn&amp;#039;t include rape doesn&amp;#039;t mean that it was accepted, by any means. Also, to encapsulate human nature as such is not a dismissal, as is evident even in our so-enlightened society when we &amp;quot;dismiss&amp;quot; the actions of men that is at times chauvinistic or derogatory as &amp;quot;boys will be boys&amp;quot;--does that mean that such behavior, speaking in broad terms, justified? I would think no. Also, while it seems as though black women did not have the kind of access to politicized power as white women did, Gordon points out, perhaps in contradiction to some of her conclusions, that half of the African American women who were married (85%) had influential husbands. I don&amp;#039;t really see much difference between what the African American women did in comparison to WASP women, despite Gordon&amp;#039;s attempts to highlight them. To me, it seems as though the only thing that really differed, notwithstanding the race issue (which I&amp;#039;m not dismissing), was the time that had elapsed between emancipation and what was then contemporary times. Like WASP women&amp;#039;s groups, black women&amp;#039;s societies were exclusionary, and it seems that if a few more generations had elapsed then the black women would be just as focused on maintaining social hierarchies as white women were. Perhaps they&amp;#039;re concentration in the rural South maintained this as immigrants seldom ventured South and therefore black women would not have a class of &amp;quot;others&amp;quot; to perform activism on. But then again the entire African American community was persecuted against so I&amp;#039;m sure it&amp;#039;s not as simplistic as that. I found the &amp;quot;white view&amp;quot; as a class issue, which I agree with and that the WASP women who were single and had a great deal of autonomy assumed that this was a class privilege and something that would not be desirable for poorer women.       -schang &lt;br /&gt;
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While I agree with the comments above noticing the differences between black and white women&amp;#039;s approaches to fundraising I found interesting how they worked together as well. According to the article women seemed to be the ringleaders not only for rights for themselves but for equality by working together against race riots, ie. Chicago 1919 p. 224. Even more interesting were women in the South working together, where they suffered racial violence constantly. It was not common to see women of both races working together for a cause but both races had common interests, each was under the domestic sphere and both had to fight for not only themselves but generations to come. I did think the way black women worked together was more effective, even without government support they were able to come together without the support of men and build a bond through sisterhood and charity. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the information presented in this article regarding the priorities of black women and their focus on education was revealing.  On page 225, Gordon points out that “education was the single most important area of activism for black women”.  It makes sense that this would be the case, but I would have guessed that issues of equality would have outranked education as the primary concern. –E Fritz&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems almost like black and white women were working towards two entirely different goals.  White women were working towards recognition and forming different groups such as the YWCA.  But they were either excluding these black women, or they were being excluded by society.  It is hard to beleive that blacks were even being lynched in the 20th century.  The push for women&amp;#039;s rights for whites seems to be taking much greater strides than for blacks because of the intense segregation.  I feel for the black women more so than white women because they were forced to go through many more difficult hardships for not only civil, but also women&amp;#039;s rights.-afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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== Judy Yung, &amp;quot;The Social Awakening of Chinese American Women as Reported in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chung Sai Yat Po&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1900-1911&amp;quot; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It’s ironic that in the early 20th century China was trying to emulate the Western world, including increasing women’s rights, to get out from under the hand of the West, and Chinese Americans emulated those reforms going on in China and not in their own country because they were so excluded from American life that they felt a closer kinship to China. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it was interesting how the reasons why people decided it was a good idea for women to have an education in America paralleled the decision for Chinese women to become educated. On page 263 Yung writes, &amp;quot;Educated women make better wives and mothers; better wives and mothers make better families and citizens; better families and citizens make a stronger China.&amp;quot; Even though I don&amp;#039;t think this should be a number one reason for a woman to be given an education, at the time I would have been happy that women&amp;#039;s education and higher education was finally accepted. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Chinese Americans were witnessing freedoms in America that were not offered to them as Chinese Americans in America or China.  Binding the feet was an example of their oppression to that of their husband.  It’s interesting that binding of the feet was compared to binding of an American woman corset.  They felt education was the key to stop the oppression.  Chinese American lineage was to their home where their families were so they naturally felt the need to change things back at home.  --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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The CSYP was a very effective source to bringing light to the atrocities that Chinese American faced and the changes that needed to take place.  Chinese American women could speak out through these journals in order to reach out to others and make changes.  As Judy Yung noted though a lot did not read these articles, the news spread.  Women talk and share their thoughts with other woman evoking their spirit and that brings change for them. --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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Interesting reading, yes--new information, not really, at least to me. Why is it ironic that China saw the way out of Western domination as its emulation? That mentality has been repeated throughout history, from the Egyptians adopting chariots to overthrow the Hyksos to Afghan and Iraqi insurgents being found with US manuals on unconventional warfare. Also, it would seem only natural that the suppression of entry into the political sphere of an immigrant population would foster the desire to interact with the mother country. An aside--my own use of that term, &amp;quot;mother country&amp;quot; fascinates me in that nations have almost always been characterized as feminine and wonder what that kind of gendered language indicates about the pervasiveness of such gendered dichotomies in everyday life. Other things I found &amp;quot;interesting&amp;quot;--the actions of politicians and probably most likely liberal-minded reformers from the Progressive Era directly contributed to the high rate of prostitution among Chinese women as they barred further immigration in California and other western states. Also found significant the direction that these women&amp;#039;s reform actions were aimed at--the revitalization of China as a nation, rather than the individualistic aims of many female reformers in America--kind of reminiscent of the African American women from the previous reading and their focus on universal rights etc. than their white female counterparts. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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The comparison between bound feet and corsets was very important.  Westerners are quick to judge bound feet for the horrible physical impact they had on women, but really, corsets were not any better.  They bent ribcages, moved organs around, etc.  My great grandmother still had to wear a corset long after they were out of fashion because her body was incapable of supporting itself anymore.  And in both the case of foot binding and corsets, while it&amp;#039;s true that men perpetuated the situation because of their ideas of what a beautiful woman should look like, women themselves were the ones to support the practices and get their daughters to do so as a sign of their femininity.   I think the author took too much of a black-and-white stance on the subject of foot binding, which as painful as it was, it was not simply a sign of the oppression of Chinese women by Chinese men.  That being said, it was important for Chinese women, both in China and America, to reject that tradition in order to begin to step out of their traditional roles.  - Alice W.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 1 – Visions of the New Woman ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Nellie Bly, Why go around the world, 1890&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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It is unfortunate that in order to prove that she was capable of doing something that was believed to only have been able to be done by a man she had to wear the same outfit for close to 3 months straight. That&amp;#039;s not masculine, it&amp;#039;s disgusting. This definitely was one of the most interesting documents that we had to read and I love that at the end she talked about how she packed too much, versus too little. It was like, in trying to prove that as a female she could do something she became an inspiration. It even still is pretty inspirational to me at least.                 -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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At first reading this article I initially thought, “How did Nellie think that she could actually do this in 1890? Was it even possible then?” Thinking more into it I can see why. She wanted to do something ambitious, that would make for a great story, but also make for a great experience, so why shouldn’t she as a woman be able to travel the world? Like Sarah, I feel bad that Nellie had to travel in one outfit for three months, but as she describes she is able to fit a good amount of clothing into her one hand-satchel, “two traveling caps…a pair of slippers, a dressing gown, tennis blazer…several changes of underwear,” (pg. 7). I would hope that priority number one would be the underwear. At the end of the article, I found that Nellie seems to indicate that she may have some sort of “baggage” in her life and I may be reading too much into it, but the way she speaks of the “the responsibilities and worries I escaped by not having a lot of trunks and boxes to look after,(pg. 7), seems to be a hidden meaning to her own emotional baggage.---Morgan M. &lt;br /&gt;
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Here is a woman ready to trek around the world, alone, with only the contents of a little bag. She has the gumption to convince her boss that she can make the trip, yet she still falls back on the idea that if she conducts herself &amp;#039;properly&amp;#039; she will &amp;quot;always find men ready to protect&amp;quot; (pg. 7) her. I don&amp;#039;t fault her for wanting this protection, travel always entails a certain degree of danger, but I do wonder at her assumptions as to what constitutes proper behavior. In making the trip, hasn&amp;#039;t she already broken several social norms concerning appropriate womanly conduct? And did she believe that men the world over would hold the same ideas about women and their behavior? What of her safety if her conduct was deemed improper? -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article really interesting because Nellie seems like a very independent and confident woman. That is why it was such a surprise to me that she quit journalism to marry a 72 year old man!! Perhaps she loved him, or maybe she thought that her job couldn&amp;#039;t last forever and she needed someone to support her? It did also say that she shed a few years off her age to make herself seem more youthful. Maybe there was a common thought in society that once a woman got too old, she wasn&amp;#039;t useful anymore. If that is true, then it must have been quite a strong societal expectation in order to get Nellie to stop what she loved doing. I think its also important to notice that Nellie had to stop her job when she got married. She obviously loved doing because she wanted to go back to it when her husband died, so there must have been some pressure on her to quit and spend her time being a wife. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also shocked at ther marriage to the rather old man, thats old today, so I&amp;#039;m sure back then that had to be quite an old guy.  I feel that Nellie is a perfect example of this New Woman, out embracing the world without a care or fear in the world, ready to tackle any man&amp;#039;s job. Good for her. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Here are the things that I found interesting in this primary document--for such a daring New Woman she seems awfully dependent on the chivalry of men. Example, &amp;quot;I knew if my conduct was proper I should always find men ready to protect me.&amp;quot; (7) So whether she had the outward trappings of the New Woman, she still thought in the same old traditional way that men are meant to protect women. Geez, we don&amp;#039;t see that today at all...outward trappings of independence and the concurrent maintenance of a traditional outlook on the behavior of men...double standard much? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Bertha Palmer: The Fair Women, Chicago, 1893&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I was actually surprised that Bertha Palmer used her speech at the World Fair to both honor women and criticise men&amp;#039;s attitudes towards women.  Women had been allowed a space at the Fair to display their own creativity, but it was within a well defined and controlled &amp;quot;sphere&amp;quot; designated by men.  With Palmer&amp;#039;s speech, we are getting to see a woman recognize the inequality of the separate spheres doctrine and publicly push for the inclusion of women in more than restrictive &amp;quot;spheres&amp;quot; constructed by men.  After all, how can a woman truly be free when she is being oppressed by men in all that she does? -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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The reasoning behind the creation of the women&amp;#039;s pavilion seem more in line with what I imagine to be the goals of feminists (8). Then again, the &amp;quot;acknowledgement&amp;quot; that the women credit men in the passage, that heretofore, men have been the sole contributors to humanity, etc etc seemed to dismiss or perhaps demonstrate ignorance of what women had accomplished throughout history. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Anna Cooper: Black Women Plan to Lead Their Race, 1892&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In the reading by Anna J. Cooper, “Black Women Plan to Lead Their Race,” I was surprised to find that African American women were a part of the club movement as much as white women. Though the clubs were separate, they paralleled each other. I think it is interesting that the reform movement was so big among black women because they were breaking out of their presumed role more so than white women because of their race. Not only did they have to worry about being women, but they also had to worry because they were black. During this time racism was an issue, and some would argue that these women should be worried about the advancement of their race rather than being part of the reform movement. However, Anna J. Cooper argues that (page 13) “To be a woman in such an age carries with it a privilege and an opportunity never implied before. But to be a woman of the Negro race in America, and to be able to grasp the deep significance of the possibilities of the crisis, is to have a heritage, it seems to me, unique in the ages.” In my opinion, Cooper believes that it is BECAUSE these women are black that they have the opportunity to make big changes. Being part of the reform movement seems to be a way for black women to seek opportunities that they may not have otherwise had. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I found that Cooper&amp;#039;s statement concerning what constituted equality--&amp;quot;without violence and without suing or special patronage then and there the whole Negro race enters with me,&amp;quot; and whether or not the Civil Rights movement and aftermath, accompanied with violence, court action and affirmative action corresponds with her vision of equality. On that note, what did she mean particularly by the exaggerated &amp;quot;importance of mere political advantage&amp;quot; (12)?&lt;br /&gt;
-schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Ida B. Wells&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Virtue knows no colorline, and the CHIVALRY which depends upon the complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect.&amp;quot; (17)--what did Wells mean by chivalry? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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I think by using the word CHIVALRY Wells is just stressing the basic respect that should be shown between two humans, rather than just relationships between men and women.-MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Frances Willard&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;–&lt;br /&gt;
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The irony of a woman/feminist naming her bicycle, a possession, a thing, Gladys should mean something, unless I&amp;#039;m reading too much into her words. But then again, her description of how Gladys was a &amp;quot;mystery&amp;quot; and that she had &amp;quot;mastered&amp;quot; all her kinks and that she put a bridle in her mouth and whipped her in victory...all very masculine language directed towards a female object. Even if that object is an inanimate bicycle, Willard&amp;#039;s use of such blatantly gendered language merits some sort of analysis. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Anzia Yezierska&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Immigrant Daughter and the Possibilities of the New World&lt;br /&gt;
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Immigrant women like Anzia and her fictional heroine Sara faced unique challenges at the turn of the century. They were caught between the growing American emphasis on education and more independence for women and their tradition bound fathers and husbands. Men like Sara&amp;#039;s father in the reading probably saw their daughters&amp;#039; rebellious streaks as not only a threat to their patriarchal authority but also to the culture and customs they brought from their countries of origin. When immigrant daughters went to school or moved out on their own they joined an &amp;#039;American&amp;#039; movement that their parents may not have understood or feared for its ability to remove their daughters from an acceptably ethnic upbringing. -Mary Ann &lt;br /&gt;
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I strongly agree with Mary Ann, I think fathers especially immigrant fathers wanted the &amp;quot;American Dream&amp;quot; and felt that when they arrived it was hard to achieve so held onto the one stable condition they always knew as being heads of the household. Men, like Sara&amp;#039;s father used a different tactic to establish authority through the use of religion,&amp;quot;It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence.&amp;quot; (22) contradicting the idea in America where women were normally seen as morally superior.   This made me wonder if the influence of new religions and cultures in America helped bring about the women&amp;#039;s movement? Did statements such as the one Sara&amp;#039;s father made cause women to rebel more and prove they did not need a man nor his religion to survive. -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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The story of the Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska is an example of traditional values and norms crashing headfirst into a changing society.  As a man of God in their old country, Sara’s father would have been required to provide spiritual leadership to his community in exchange for food and shelter; but in America that is not the case.  Instead, he forces his family to sacrifice so that he can continue to focus completely on his religion.  Sara’s ability to break away from her father’s overbearing dominance also forces her to turn her back on her sisters and mother.  This conflict between generations was a prominent narrative at the turn of the century. – E Fritz  &lt;br /&gt;
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Sara&amp;#039;s assertion that America is nothing like the old country, and that in America she can do whatever she wants is a very interesting concept, coming from a woman. This was the assumption many immigrants coming to America although the reality of the situation oftentimes clashed violently with the ideal. That an immigrant female author would write in such glowing terms about the possibilities of being a woman in America should mean something, although I don&amp;#039;t know how the story ends and it is fiction. -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Edith Eudora Ammons&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – A Woman Homesteader&lt;br /&gt;
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When I have pictured manifest destiny, I have hardly pictured Edith Ammons and her sister, two women, moving in to the West alone to build up new lives together.  Of course, I would never think of the West in the 19th century as a place of freedom and new beginnings because I know how rough it was from studying history.  Ammons herself admits, &amp;quot;This was not the West as I had dreamed it... It was a desolate, forgotten land, without vegetation save for the dry, crackling grass, without visible tokens of fertility&amp;quot; (p. 26).  Yet, the sisters toughed it out, taking on hardship after hardship in exchange for their freedom to live where they wanted and do what they wanted.  I think that with our comforts of today, it is often hard to imagine women putting themselves through such trials to achieve the freedom they desired. -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 2 – Expanding Horizons for Educated Women ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Molly Dewson writes home from Wellesley (1894-96)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing I really liked about this story was how Molly talked about  how she struggled with her studies. I thought this was important because it shows that girls weren&amp;#039;t just sent away to learn how to become good wives, but they were actually taught things. They actually had to learn science and practice experiments. Molly seems like a completely modern college girl in the way she complains about her classes! She also talks about her social life quite openly. Girls were willing to dress up like boys in order to go out and have fun. Its nice to see that all girls of that period weren&amp;#039;t prim and proper like we are sometimes led to believe. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the first thing that struck me when reading this was the idea of &amp;quot;smashing&amp;quot;.  Did the intro to the letter say that it was acceptable for young women to fall in love with one another in college during that time period.  I find that hard to believe considering the fear of parents that their daughters would not be fit for marriage.  I also suppose that there might be some things missing from these letters, I mean I know I don&amp;#039;t tell my mom everything that I do at college. - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Jane Addams discusses the early days of Hull House (1910)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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In class we spoke some of this issue that the “New Woman” faced about what to do after leaving college. Here I found what Jane Addams and Ellen Starr do very admirable, such as creating the famous Hall House. In today’s world you don’t see many women, especially white, moving into “bad” parts of cities to truly help the people there. But these women I found fearless of being in Chicago such as the incident with them leaving the side door left open and “were much pleased in the morning to find that we possessed a fine illustration of the honesty and kindliness of our new neighbors,” (pg. 36). I would have been so upset that I had risked my home and self, just being in a new place for the first night is nerve-racking, but leaving a door open would make me even more paranoid. These women were actually asked to “wash the newborn babies, and to prepare the dead for burial, to nurse the sick, and to ‘mind the children’,” (pg. 36). Where there no others to do these tasks, such as a mortician, hospital, or baby-sitters? I know to remember that these people were of the poorest of the city, but these women were asked to prepare the dead, really? Ew.---Morgan M.  &lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Alice Hamilton explores the dangerous trades (1943)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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The first piece of this article I saw was that it parallels to the Jane Addams Article in that Alice Hamilton spent time at the Hull House. In her writing Alice actually mentions the Hull House, other than her biography at the beginning stating that she had spent time there and that she truly learned something from her time at the Hull House gives more evidence to the fact of Jane creating something great. “Life at Hull-House had accustomed me to going straight to the homes of people whom I wished to learn something and talking to them in their own surroundings, where they have courage to speak out what is in their minds,” (pg. 39). The Hull House taught Alice how to relate to people and I can see this consideration being very important, essential, to her profession of being a physician. In addition to her being a physician I think that a certain level of arrogance blossomed as well. Alice tends to look down on people at times, but at the same time being understanding; an example being her take on the reason for immigrants to take jobs to support their families after coming to American; “of course they took the first job they could find and if it proved to be one that weakened and crippled them---well, that was their bad luck!” (pg. 39). I found this a bit uncharacteristic of the women who spent time in the Hull House, but that is entirely my take. I’m sure being a women physician is something to be quite proud of, but to look down on immigrants who you are caring for because they are trying to make the best of the life they have been dealt, seems a bit harsh. ---Morgan M.    &lt;br /&gt;
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I was so surprised with the statistic in the beginning of this article that said &amp;quot;around 1900 as many as one in five doctors were women, although that percentage would not be reached again until the 1970&amp;#039;s.&amp;quot; When did the switch happen? It seems that during the turn of the century, the opportunities for women experienced a brief moment of expansion before the doors were closed upon them again. I was impressed with the work that Alice Hamilton was able to accomplish, and was also horrified by her accounts of the devastating effects of poisonous materials in the workplace. I understand Morgans point about Hamilton coming off as very arrogant, however I think this type of attitude towards the poor was probably a characteristic of her upbringing most likely as a member of the middle or upper class. Even though Alice Hamilton did work towards finding a cure for diseases that afflicted the poor she may not necessarily feel that much warmth and compassion towards them. --Emma &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mamie Garvin Fields –Af-Am Women enter the Teaching profession (1983) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mary Ritter Beard – Women and progressive politics. (1915)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Chapter 4—Feminists, Anarchists, and Other Rebel Girls ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Mother Jones and striking Colorado Mine workers (about 1903 strike)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed reading Mother Jones. Her writing is very strong and passionate, and its hard not to have emotions dredged up while reading about this strike. I found it interesting that she went and stayed with the families working in the mine to witness first-hand the hardships they endure. The conditions seemed to be not too far off of what miners dealt with in more recent times which is saddening. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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Why did they call her Mother Jones? What did this say about the continued assumptions concerning the proper role of women in society, albeit a radicalized one? Love her take on women&amp;#039;s suffrage as a hobby of aristocratic women. A comment on her most enduring words--to not be ladylike...that implies that there was and will continue to be behavior that is classified as ladylike and unladylike...what does that mean about her own assumptions of where feminism would lead to? Concerning the actual text, I&amp;#039;m concerned about her attitude towards the constitutionality of laws. Her advocacy of violence as a means to correct what she sees as wrong is disconcerting. If more people with different opinions felt and acted the way she wanted, then we would end up without a government fairly soon. Aren&amp;#039;t there people who take her words to heart about using violence, but in a manner opposite what she would have wanted? For example, the bombing of abortion clinics? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte Perkins Gilman – a Feminist challenge to the privatized home&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading “A Feminist Challenge to the Privatized Home” I am fairly certain that Charlotte Perkins Gilman hated to cook. Perhaps it is because of some culinary incident that happened to her during her first marriage where she ended up going crazy and leaving her husband and child and eventually marrying her cousin. Regardless of what happened, she is obviously traumatized. She believes that people should live in their private homes or apartments, but should also have communal areas (such as a kitchen) as well, and this will pretty much solve all problems of the world. Gilman’s ideas are actually quite smart when you put aside some of her obvious biases. The separation of labor when it comes to housework is really smart and efficient. If women were able to choose what task they wanted to perform (cook, clean, etc.) and they just focused on that task, things would get done much faster and much better. According to Gilman, this would lead to a more productive society overall because women would have the time to use their minds. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Culinary misadventures aside, I&amp;#039;m curious about what people thought about &amp;quot;Motherhood is not a remote contingency, but the common duty and common glory of womanhood. If women did choose professions unsuitable to maternity, nature would quietly extinguish them by her unvarying process.&amp;quot; (80) Ignoring my penchant for finding gendered language and Gilman&amp;#039;s reference to nature as a woman (why, because nature provides and women produce children?) but her assertion that motherhood is the duty and glory of womanhood and that there are certain professions inherently not suitable for women, but if women want to do these things, then she can do so, it&amp;#039;s just that nature will off her in a hurry. So...in her mind there really is such a thing as jobs that women shouldn&amp;#039;t do, but should be able to try anyways? -schang&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Josephine Conger-Koneko – Wages for housework – 1913&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that it was interesting how Josephine Conger-Koneko believed so strongly that women should be payed for housework. I especially thought that it was interesting how she expected a woman&amp;#039;s husband&amp;#039;s boss to pay her for her house labor, as it was the woman who made it possible for the man to work. However, she brings about a point she never truly expands upon; although it was unusual, not every working man did marry eventually. What about these men? They still managed to attend work without a wife taking care of their home. And if Conger-Koneko received her wish and women were paid for their labor at home, should these men be paid double for attending work and for taking care of their home?&lt;br /&gt;
-Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article the most interesting out of all of them.  Josephine Conger-Koneko takes a very hard line on the position that women should be paid for their housework.  I also found it interesting how she equivocated a woman&amp;#039;s life in the home doing housework for her husband as the life of a slave.  She seems to be a bit radical in her discussion of women being paid for household duties.  I also found it striking that Koneko argues that a husband should go to his employer and ask for wages for his wife at home doing the housework and how men getting married is actually benefical more for the employer because then he will have a continuing work force. Did women during this time believe they should be paid for work, and if after reading this, did woman&amp;#039;s groups advocate paid labor for women working in the home?  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Margaret Sanger’s epiphany over birth control – 1936&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this particular article. I like how Sanger used a personal story to make birth control, which was typically thought of as a female issue, a family and medical issue. By bringing in the husband and children of Sadie Sachs, Sanger made it obvious that the situation didn&amp;#039;t just affect the mother, but her family as well. She also reflected what a desperate situation it truly was to have another mouth to feed in a poor, working class family. I also liked how she illustrated the point that many men were irresponsible about birth control, so it should be up to the responsible woman to decide whether or not she should have a child. -Anna K Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the Sanger article was very interesting.  I like how Sanger is able to use the story of Mrs. Sachs to show the rising need and importance for birth control.  I think it presents birth control as more of a social issue, rather than just an issue of liberating woman&amp;#039;s sexuality.  She demonstrates that birth control is a necessity because of all the hurt, poverty and death that is occurring due to a lack  of birth control.  At this time, one had to have enough money for doctors who they could pay to tell them about birth control options/abortion due to the Comstock Laws, and I think this is important for why Sanger decides to advocate birth control, especially to the poorer classes.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the novelty of birth control and it&amp;#039;s practices were particularly interesting during this time period.  It was a process which was becoming more widely popularized because it was directly connected to women&amp;#039;s growing independence from men.  I agree with the fact that birth control began to empower women because it allowed them to choose weather or not they wanted to get pregnant, whereas previously they were almost forced into sex.  I think Sanger was wise in attempting to make birth control a more medical issue , but I also think it has feminist elements because it was able to empower women to make more significant sexual decisions.-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Sanger was an insanely intelligent woman for using the Sachs family as a part of her argument. Rather than allowing for men (and women too) to scrutinize women for their decision to use birth control. She leaves some of the responsibility up to the men, by showing how it is relevant to their lives too.--MDvora&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Emma Goldman – A Radical view of women’s emancipation – 1911&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked this article because it reflects upon the push made by female activists towards the real freedoms they desired. Emma Goldman criticizes the &amp;quot;superficial goals of the modern woman&amp;#039;s movement,&amp;quot; and expresses that &amp;quot;True emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts...it begins in woman&amp;#039;s soul&amp;quot; (MAW 89). She also expresses that women do have the ability to shape or direct their own destiny. After reading a quote from page 90 where she said, &amp;quot;how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office?&amp;quot; it reminded me of when slaves first got their freedom. They were free but not at all equal in social or economic status. With women gaining suffrage they gained the opportunities men held but they were still limited by sexual discrimination.   -David Fitch&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_3_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 3 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_3_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-01-28T05:54:55Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Violet Cragg, Ex-Slave and Former Army Nurse, requests an Army Pension, 1908 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== US, 178-193, Devon Mihesuah, “’Too Dark to Be Angels’: The Class System among the Cherokees at the Female Seminary” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;One of the things that stood out to me in this article was the paradoxes.  This was full of them regarding cherokee values as well as teachings.  There seems to be great confusion between  the pure bloods and mixed-bloods.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  For example, there were many mixed-blood instructors, but no traditional cherokee teachers, yet the school was based on cherokee values.  Also, many of the teachers repressed Cherokee values, which seems to defeat the purpose of a cherokee boarding school.  Also, a girl named Na-Li defended her honor in claiming that both of her parents were full cherokee, but many of the teachers did not teach traditional values so it seems like a frivolous concern.  It appears to obtain a traditional cherokee eduaction when there were so many paradoxes between the people.-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was struck by the difference between the attitude towards Native American ancestry of the girls at the Cherokee Female Seminary (and for that matter, of the Cherokee nation as a whole during the 1800s) and modern Americans.  In the nineteenth century, it was a desirable thing to have white blood, as it indicated that one was more civilized, and whiter Cherokees held a higher status than more full-blooded ones.  Education at the seminary served to help the girls, even those who were full-blooded, become “whiter.”  Now, white Americans, when discussing their ancestry, are extremely proud of even the tiniest bit of Native American blood they might contain.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I can think of very few people with whom I’ve discussed ancestry with that don’t claim to have at least one Native American in the family, myself included.  I think that perhaps it has something to do with&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; our romantic view of Native Americans&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and a desire to show that we don’t feel animosity towards them any longer.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Alice on her analysis in regards to pride about having Native American ancestry. There are also a number of other things that surprised me while reading this. I was surprised that the &amp;quot;mixed-blood&amp;quot; families were more accepted in society and received better. Though I understand their skin was lighter, in many cases even today, biracial or people with a variety of ethnic backgrounds are ostracized from both groups. I was also slightly surprised by the division among the Cherokee. Whether mixed-blood or not, I was expecting some sense of unity that did not occur. Looking back into history, many people remember their roots or where they came from, this is not the case in this situation. This alone could have proved detrimental to the efforts of Native Americans at this time.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;On page 190 of “Too Dark to be Angles,” I found these two sentences to be contradictory to the rest of the article. First, “The girls’ seminary experiences helped to strengthen their identities as Cherokees…” Second, “Both the progressive and the traditional tribal members considered themselves to be more Cherokee than the other group.”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think the reason that these sentences threw me off is because throughout the reading I the author gave numerous examples of how full-blooded Cherokees were discriminated against within the seminary. Those Cherokees that were mixed blooded were considered more intelligent because they were whiter. So, it just seems a little contradictory to argue that the seminary schools (that didn’t teach anything of the Cherokee language or culture) brought about a strong Cherokee identity to its students. -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that the school did work to develop a Cherokee identity in its students, just not a traditional identity and not one that we would imagine as Cherokee today. Yes, some of the girls only had trace amounts of Cherokee ancestry, but they still identified strongly as Cherokee. It&amp;#039;s just that they identified with an assimilated form of Cherokee identity, one that emulated white society. They ridiculed the darker, less assimilated girls not for being Cherokee per se, but for not embracing their version of what it meant to be Cherokee. As for the girls being bullied for their skin tone and traditions, they may have come to identify more strongly with their traditional Cherokee roots in the face of opposition. So both groups did maintain a connection to a Cherokee identity, it&amp;#039;s just that, as the article states, &amp;quot;there were differences in opinion as to what a Cherokee really was.&amp;quot; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;While reading the article “Too Dark to Be Angels” I found that it parallels to the story of “Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884”.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Both speak about the Indian women’s seminaries, it isn’t our-right spoken in Zitkala-Sa’s article, but it’s implied in her wanting to go East “crossed the Missouri in the evening…we stopped before a massive brick building,” (pg.241). I also found a parallel that men have taken advantage of women as objects here as well. “The Cherokee National Council was controlled by progressive, educated, mixed-blood tribesmen,” (pg. 178). Once again dictating what women learn about or shall act while in such seminary; to mold and bend them into what they see fit. ---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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Another point I did not understand at first was why the darker girls, who had more Cherokee blood were being made fun of because of it. “Mixed-blood students frequently scorned those girls who had less white blood and darker skin,” (pg.180). Is this not a school for assimilation for the Cherokee girls? Reading further in I found that the women and girls of this school strive to be “equal” to white women, as “anything ‘white’ was ideal” stated Kate O’Donald Ringland, (pg.181). For this fact, to be as white as possible, the seminary’s repressed all Cherokee values and “offered no courses focusing on Cherokee culture,” (pg.178). ---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Erin brings up a great point that I did not catch myself.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Although the schools did seem to instill a sense of Cherokee within in the women, I think the schools main accomplishment was the desire to be more &amp;quot;white&amp;quot;,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; as Morgan points out.  I think this was really emphasized through the perceptions of intelligence among the girls at the seminary and the teaching that was going on.  As quoted on page 181, Albert Sydney Wyly &amp;quot;expressed his impatience with the full-blood girls by referring to the mixed-bloods as &amp;quot;whiter&amp;quot; and therefore &amp;quot;more intellectual&amp;quot;.  I think these schools were set up to Americanize the Native American population, rather than instill Cherokee ideals. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it truly disturbing that female teachers exemplified multiple cases of insensitivity throughout this reading. The teachers, though white, should have recognized the similarities between themselves and the Cherokee girls they were responsible for. At this point in time, women had few rights, neither did the Cherokee. It would have been more productive to encourage the young girls, in turn making it easier for them to assimilate, if that was in fact their main goal.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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What I thought was interesting about the Cherokee Indian Seminary for girls was that there was class difference within that Cherokee society.  Those that looked more white versus those that did not basing emphasis on what amount of Cherokee the girls had in them.  The more white blood in them, the better status they had at the seminary.  Some of the girls did not even know their native language and others did might help explain some of the division.  I don’t think the teachers helped with that either.  These girls had pressures from what was expected of them in “white” roles and at the same time trying to maintain their traditional roles in Native American society.  These girls being defined as either “full blooded“ and “mixed blood” became intermingled with the pressures to fit in.  --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it surprising that the Cherokee National Council was made up Cherokee that were mostly mixed blood and prescribed to upper-class Southern antebellum values. Many of the girls who attended the seminary were from slave holding families. Considering that many of them ascribed to white values and had the appearance of whites, why did they even acknowledge themselves as Cherokee when they felt that Cherokee were inferior to whites? Why didn’t these girls just go to a regular school, leaving the more traditional, “uneducated” girls who wanted to learn about white society to go to the Cherokee seminaries? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting in “Too Dark to be Angels,” that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;despite how many girls could have been traumatized by the racism against them, the seminary actually helped many girls get ahead in life.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; At the very end of the article, Mihesuah says “despite its shortcomings, the Cherokee seminary was unquestionably the catalyst for the prosperity of many Cherokee women and their families.” (p. 191) Yes, the seminary made it almost impossible to keep one’s culture, but at the same time, it made it possible for many girls to succeed who would not previously have been able to. The school taught subjects like latin and math that other white schools would have been teaching, thereby allowing Cherokee girls to take part in mainstream society. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked reading the essay &amp;quot;Too Dark to Be Angels.&amp;quot; I thought there were multiple interesting points in the article. In particular I thought how the full-blood Cherokee girls were treated resembled what can be found at high schools even today. Some students today are still picked on because of their race or because they are of lower class. The reading talked about how the girls were sometimes left out because they were falling behind academically and were not able to go on outings with the older high school girls and also were unable to afford party clothes and/or after-dinner snacks. These types of things made the full-blood Cherokee girls feel inferior and they can also make girls in schools today feel left out or inferior to the upper class or other white females. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked Amy&amp;#039;s point above. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even back in 19th century Cherokee seminaries, there were still mean girl cliques.  A tale as old as time...&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Also, I have the same questions as Taylor. Why did the girls consider themselves Cherokee still if they resembled and lived like the white southerners and felt inferior to them for being Cherokees.. I was astounded as to how European the girls in the photos looked, and then I read the captions where one stated the girls pictured were 1/32 Cherokee. I was quite shocked to learn how even those very distantly-related Cherokee girls considered themselves Cherokee even when they had never even  heard the language or witnessed any tribal functions/ceremonies. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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It is interesting that both the mixed-blood and full-blood Cherokee girls in seminary identified with their Cherokee origins, and that each felt that they were the more “in touch” with their lineage than the other group. It seems that one’s perception of their identity had more of an impact on who they became than solely genetic factors. Those who had lighter skin knew that they had more options socially than those who were darker, because they fit in better with the notion that the white society was the more desirable. Yet at the same time, they did not identify completely with the white culture they sought to mix into, instead they wanted to be identified as Cherokee.  I find it interesting as well that the society that had previously held the “one drop” policy that restricted African Americans did not seem to have the same effect on schooling for Native Americans (perhaps I missed that section in the readings but that struck me as slightly different)--jmarshal &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Christine L. the cliques inside the seminary were similar to the cliques we see today in movies such as Mean Girls, it shows that we have not changed much throughout history and that the class system exists with the influence of monetary status. The girls who were full-blood were not open to the full possibilites education had to offer because they were not able to attend primary school, but I found it interesting that they were still able to maintain good grades. While, some of the girls could not stay long in the seminary due to family or financial reasons they still maintained grades close to the mixed girls. I wondered how many students the seminary accepted? If there was a limit and even with the comments from the superintendent why were so many full-blooded girls accepted when they faced criticism for being themselves? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Some of the passages I found most striking in this article involved the feelings of inferiority that were internalized by the students, particularly those who had more Cherokee blood.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Na-li expresses happily that &amp;quot;My complexion does not prevent me from acquiring knowledge and being useful hereafter.&amp;quot; [p. 182]  That they were so able to associate their own heritage and skin color with their inferior social standing demonstrates the ways that the seminary failed them culturally.  On page 185, a male Cherokee seminary graduate celebrates his &amp;quot;whiteness&amp;quot; and says &amp;quot;it is the white blood that made us what we are.&amp;quot;  It just seems like a pretty high price to pay to find success outside of the Cherokee community.  - Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like the the primary attitude and atmosphere of the female seminary was racial ignorance, as seen on Page 181 which says, &amp;quot;The teachers also relentlessly reinforced the importance of learning and retaining the values of white society.&amp;quot; It seemed as though the school&amp;#039;s main goal was to force any &amp;quot;full-blood&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;half-blood&amp;quot; students to assimilate into the white society, disregarding any traditions or remnants of their previous Cherokee lives. While the seminary prided itself on creating upstanding young women, it also made them very rude, with the attitude of &amp;quot;i&amp;#039;m better than you.&amp;quot; There is a prime example on P. 182, which says, &amp;quot;In comparing her tribe and theirs, she pointed out that the Osages listened attentively to the seminarians sing &amp;#039;Over There,&amp;#039; because, she figured, at least the &amp;#039;wild and untutored Savage has an ear for music as well as the cultivated and refined.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; The girls may have left seminary &amp;quot;more refined&amp;quot; but in reality, they were just Cherokee girls who threw away their old values and family traditions to transform into a woman more acceptable by white society. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== US, 194-220, Paige Raibmon, “The Practice of Everyday Colonialism: Indigenous Women at Work in the Hop Fields and Tourist Industry of Puget Sound” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Alice, I was struck at how the view of Native Americans has changed. Paige Raibmon mentions in her article how Native American women in the 19th century were seen a subhuman because they could &amp;quot;endure childbirth painlessly&amp;quot; (199). This excuse was used to justify using them for hard manual labor. I was also shocked to discover that the Native Americans picking hops were not seen as laborers, but instead were objects for tourists to gawk at. Finally, Mihesuah mentions in her article several times that the Native Americans saw themselves as being less intelligent and less culturally valuable than whites. As Alice mentions, now many Americans glorify their Native American heritage. It seems that now we are still influenced by the same views as the white 19th century tourists were. Many Americans see their Native American ancestry as a sense of freedom and a reminder of simpler times and simply ignore the hardships their ancestors went through.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found the act that a pregnancy didn’t slow down Indigenous women from working&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and that the managers would pay their workers for giving birth for working. “Ezra Meeker, who paid a dollar to employees who gave birth while working on his farm, new mothers where back in the fields within two days, babies at their sides,” (pg.199).  I cannot believe that this really happened!---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I found that the Indigenous women were also seen as a tourist attraction too, “the spectacle of authentic Indians,” (pg.201) as if people had never seen such a thing. These people, who use to dominate the population of their American homeland were now the minority and seen as passive tourist luxuries.  The “curios” that the Indigenous women created were now being bought by white women and seen as a foreign object to add to the look of their homes, “no home is complete now-a-days without a neat and artistically arranged Indian basket corner,” (pg.203).  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;These women really seen as a sideshow in that “viewing and assessing migrant Indian women’s labor and lives became one of the pleasurable acts of public consumption through which women constituted themselves as modern,” (pg.203).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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To me, this article highlighted a change in the way that Americans viewed Native Americans. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In the span of a few decades, white Americans went from fearing the &amp;#039;savages&amp;#039; to planning vacations around watching the newly docile Native Americans working on the hops farms. And the perception of Native American women played a large role in that shift.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Women were often the ones in the fields working, picking hops with babies and children nearby and so providing a domestic front that replaced the old warrior image. Women also made many of the crafts that became popular with the white tourists. Their work became the must have pieces in white middle class homes, and suddenly Native Americans were seen as the producers of mildly exotic talking pieces rather than a threat to family and farm. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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Indigenous women workers were often engaged in “traditional culture” and “modern labor” at the same time. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;But what defines “traditional?” The author writes, “workers frequently used income from ‘modern’ wage labor to meet ‘traditional’ obligations to kin and community and to invest in Indigenous economies” (196). Wage labor didn’t assimilate these Indians, as they just used the money to maintain their culture. But in the case of meeting obligations to kin, Indian wage laborers weren’t really different than any other wage laborer. Also, couldn’t an Indian woman who gets paid to pick hops but also weaves a basket to sell be comparable to a white woman who gets paid to work in a factory but also sews a quilt to sell? Both weaving and sewing could be considered &amp;quot;traditional&amp;quot; activities, so wouldn&amp;#039;t that mean that whites could also simultaneously engage in &amp;quot;traditional culture&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;modern labor?&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Squaw drudges who failed to embody the proper gendered division of labor were implicitly to blame for both their own oppression and men&amp;#039;s dissolution&amp;quot; (p. 199).  These working class Indigenous women were trying to support their families in any way possible, but of course they were still expected to remain in the home, in the private sphere.  When they were seen working harder than men, they were immediately blamed for all of the men&amp;#039;s laziness instead of being praised for their hard labor and determintion to support their families.  They were especially looked down on when they accepted money from tourists who treated them as &amp;quot;tourist attractions&amp;quot; (p. 201).  However, as the article mentions, this income was often more reliable than what they received for fieldwork.  I think this gives us a good glimpse at the society of the late nineteenth century, where people expected the impossible and never considered the reality.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Today these women are known for all the hard labor they went through to support their families and to survive, hardly what they were known for during their time.  I think we also try to remember the discrimination and obstacles they faced as an indigenous peoples.  They were not seen as normal, everyday people, but as &amp;quot;field hands,&amp;quot;vanishing Indians&amp;quot; (p.201), tourist attractions, &amp;quot;subjects&amp;quot; for photographs (p. 202), and manual laborers.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I was really struck by the way the author said that indigenous women at this time were “dehumanized.” I had never really thought about it in that context, but it is true with the way white women thought about Indians. Because they were closely affiliated with nature and because of the belief that they didn’t feel pain during childbirth, they were no longer women or even really human. This is why it was so easy for white women to treat them as a sort of spectacle as opposed to real people. They acted the complete opposite from how women were supposed to act. -  Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I really couldn&amp;#039;t believe the way the indigenous people, women in particular were viewed and treated by the white people. I can&amp;#039;t believe that groups of people actually went to where the laborers were working to watch and see a &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; &amp;quot;tradtional&amp;quot; Native American. So these white families or individuals went to look at them for fun and then scrutinized those same workers for what they bought with their money, what clothes they wore, and how they tried to act more &amp;quot;white?&amp;quot; I thought that was crazy. I think the white Americans should really have thought of something better to do with their time. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== MP, 252-258-- Deena Gonzalez, “Life and Legend of Gertrudis Barcelo in 19th C. Sante Fe” (2005) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In reading &amp;quot;The Life and Legend of Getrudis Barcelo in the Ninteenth-Century Santa Fe,&amp;quot; I was very intrigued how different life seemed to be out in the western United States.  He mentions how people like Barcelo had simply gone into a town and were occassionally able to change it.  Gonzalez openly discusses brothels, gambling, and other activities that were not seen as much in the eastern United States.  The most interesting fact was that &amp;quot;women were expected to defer to men but did not.&amp;quot; This appears very different to the rest of the U.S. where the gender roles were very strict.  It seems that out west it was much easier to live a more care-free life.-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Gertrudis Barceló was a really cool woman for her time! She was a smart businesswoman who made a lot of money and owned a lot of property. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;One of her more profitable endeavors was opening a saloon (p255), “she made the saloon the hub of the town’s social and economic life and at the hall she kept abreast of the latest political developments.” Her success gave her independence, but also violated female codes of behavior of the time.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; However, the author gives Gertrudis Barceló a lot of credit that the saloon was an establishment where men who spoke different languages could come together and gamble and drink, and as they did this stereotypes were broken and fears and prejudices eroded. I am curious as to how intentional this was on the part of Gertrudis Barceló. Was she truly trying to break barriers, or was she looking to capitalize on the situation and make money? Does it really matter? – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I just wanted to throw in that I googled Gertrudis Barceló after doing the reading, and I found it interesting that she sided with the Americans during the war. She gave the Americans valuable information and even loaned them money. I think it is pretty clear that she was incredibly intelligent. (source: http://www.britannica.com/hispanic_heritage/article-9124916) -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed the story of Doña Gertrudis Barceló in that she was a woman who took charge and made something of herself unlike the white women who were quick to subdue themselves to men. “her success as a business women and gambler gave her unique independence ordinarily denied women,” (pg.254). Even as a women she was seen as so successful and powerful that “politicians and military officers alike went seeking her opinion or involved her in their discussions about trade or the army,” (pg.255). Never before have I heard of a women being consulted by military men and political men! Barceló also helped in integrating people among different cultures, “she set the stage as well for the second, when women began marrying the newcomers,” (pg.257). I really see Barceló as a role model type no matter if she was into gambling and possibly running a brothel, she was able to make a name for herself even as a woman.---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this reading on Gertrudis Barcelo very, very interesting! Her story seemed very inspiring and I thought her impact on the Euro-American settlers was quite profound.  I think an important point that was made in the piece is how quick American settlers were to judge peoples they had never met.  I liked how Barcelo was a woman who was able to help these new protestant men adapt, for lack of a better term to a new society, &amp;quot;They could judge the locals firsthand and could observe a community&amp;#039;s values and habits through a single activity,  After they had a few drinks, their initial fears and prejudices gradually yielded to the relaxed, sociable atmosphere of the gambling hall...&amp;quot;(257)  Although, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I do think it is important to realize that this is just one snapshot of a woman going above and beyond what was typically expected of a woman.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I agree with Morgan, she was definitely able to make a name for herself, especially in the presence of white men who probably viewed themselves as racially and culturally superior.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought Gertrudis Barceló was very interesting because she was innovative and smart.  She was Spanish and stood out from those traditional female American roles.  I don’t think she bought into that same notion that some  women did of what was expected of them.  Her business was a lucrative one and she seized opportunities to make money.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;If she had been a man we would have never heard about her.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   --MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that the thing that stood out from this article the most wasn&amp;#039;t just her personal account of what had happened to her, but rather the statement on page 256 &amp;quot;To the protestant mind, nothing short of the complete elimination of gambling would lift New Mexicans out of their servility and make them worthy of United States citizenship. The Jacksonian Americans wanted to replace gambling with industry and enterprise&amp;quot; because this statement can be tweaked in so many different ways throughout American history so that the &amp;quot;(White) Protestants&amp;quot; can use their alleged superiority to promote morals within a different racial or ethnic group. Yet, I&amp;#039;d be willing to believe that white protestants could be found partaking in said gambling. --Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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Gertrudis Barceló was undeniably a fascinating, intelligent and successful woman. One of the things that amused me as I read her story was the reasoning behind her antagonists&amp;#039; animosity. For her fellow Spanish-American women, jealous of her success and freedom, slandered her whenever they could (p. 254). I also found it interesting that for some Protestants, despite the fact that she was industrious and resourceful, the means of her wealth made her unworthy of her praise. While for others, like Josiah Gregg, Barceló was admirable, despite the saloon and gambling, because &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;her money &amp;quot;eventually helped elevate her moral character&amp;quot; (253).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this article incredibly fascinating. I thought it was interesting how the perception of Barceló as an &amp;quot;immoral woman&amp;quot; who &amp;quot;dressed outrageously&amp;quot; was then generalized to include all of the women in Santa Fe. A factor that contributed to Barceló&amp;#039;s notoriety was suspicions of her running a brothel. Surely there were also a smattering of white women engaged in the same act of &amp;quot;moral laxity&amp;quot;, although perhaps not of the same caliber as Barceló. However, the overall perception of white women still remained pure and chaste while the women of Santa Fe were perceived in a whole new manner because of just one woman. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Erin--thanks for the link! It seems to me that Barceló was an amazing woman, one of those larger-than-life characters that make such excellent stories. I found it interesting how Gonzalez tried to separate the facts of Barceló&amp;#039;s life from the fictions created and written about her. Her true life and nature are very much a mystery, cross-referenced from accounts of the period.  --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this reading to be the most interesting. Gertrudis Barceló was able to change the behavior of western women through a saloon, and not only that..she was a woman, making big bucks. Dancing, smoking, gambling makes it sound like her saloon was the modern-day club of the time. Because their was a &amp;quot;disjunction between the idealized married life and the conditions that stood in the way of its realization...such as taking in boarders or having children out of wedlock&amp;quot;(255), she was able to pull off this &amp;quot;step outside the boundaries of her society&amp;quot;. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed this passage because it shed light on an area that women are not typically portrayed as being a part of. Gambling, dancing and the general atmosphere and persona attributed to running a saloon are typically male dominated spheres (even today most women who work there or are seen doing these types of things are looked at as &amp;quot;loose&amp;quot; or simply atypical. It was interesting to read about a woman who broke the mold back then and who probably would have the same effect in certain areas of the US today. --jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susan Shelby Magoffin’s diary about her first days in Santa Fe, 1846 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Susan Shelby seems to find the positive in living in and travelling through New Mexico and the West, unlike Mrs. A. M. Green.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  This is probably due to the fact that she keeps herself busy with housework, improving her Spanish, and getting to know the locals.  I enjoyed reading the prejudices Shelby believes of the Mexicans.  She is surprised to find that her Mexican servant, who she was quick to call &amp;quot;one of the numbskulls&amp;quot; (p. 234), is actually quite smart and picks up on things very quickly.  She also realizes the Mexicans&amp;#039; intelligence when they offer her useful help and advice with things that Shelby believes may be &amp;quot;the first of the kind they have ever seen&amp;quot; (p. 235).  Shelby also seems to imply that the Mexicans are gaudy and extravagant with their parties when she is describing the managerie.  It is important to note that she is surprised to discover that when rich Mexicans &amp;quot;attend a place of the kind to take a servant along and while sitting to use them as an article of furniture&amp;quot; (p. 236).  To me, this appears to be the point where Shelby is realizing that even the Mexicans have a hierarchal system; they are not all stupid servants.  Another highlight of Shelby&amp;#039;s diary is where she points out her place in society - well, more like her place in the home, really.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;On Friday the 4th, she writes about putting all of her energy, and her servant&amp;#039;s energy in to cleaning the house.  She is determined to do her &amp;quot;duty so well so as to gain one bright smile and sweet kiss from [her] good, kind husband&amp;quot; (p. 234).  I think this is a great example of the separate spheres and the idea that these women had of making the homes perfect, romanticized places for their husbands to return.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Apparently it is so serious, she may not receive her husband&amp;#039;s acceptance and affection when he returns home!  Although, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it seems like that would be due to her punishing herself rather than a punishment from her husband.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rape of Indian women in CA, 1862 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The anonymous account of the Rape of Indian women was interesting and upsetting. The writer is obviously outraged by the egregious acts of the “supposed” United States Officers and their utter lack of respect for the Native Americans. In my opinion there were two messages posted in this letter. The obvious issue with the rape of course, but the writer also makes a point to note “Whether he found a fit subject to practice his virtuous and civilizing purposes, the writer in not informed.” (p 237)  This seems like an intentional dig at the “civilizing” practices of the Americans in regards to the natives. The writer illustrates the irony in these practices through his letter; rape is an uncivilized and immoral act, in this case perpetrated by the very people who are attempting to “civilize” the native people of the land.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was surprised to see that this was published in a newspaper. While it is upsetting, disgusting, immoral, etc. I wouldn&amp;#039;t think that newspapers of the time would have had the courage to publish such a piece against the stationed soldiers.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  It does go to show that people were taking note of the uncivilized nature of the Americans (as Caryn said) and the irony of the whole situation. Would something like this be followed up on by law enforcement, or simply shrugged off?  - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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First, I completely agree with Christine about how it was interesting that someone was brave enough to publish this. I think it was awful the way these Indian women were treated. They had done nothing wrong, but probably were submissive to the soldiers because they were afraid. The worst part about this entire situation and others like it, was that these soldiers probably got away without punishment for what they did, or if they were punished, it was minimal. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Bills of Sale of Chinese Prostitutes, 1875-1876 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Through the whole of the Sale of Chinese Prostitutes documents the women were used as objects of prostitution to their owners to which they owed money to.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; What I do not understand is why did these women so easily give over the use of their body for such little owed money for such a long period of time?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; And I highly doubt any of the three women actually fulfilled their time of four years thus adding more years onto the sentence.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;And why would they let themselves be prostituted for borrowing such a little amount of money? $630, $470, $503, all under a thousand and yet they had to serve for 4 years in each instance. Shouldn’t they stick up for themselves and get an actual job to pay back the loan? That brings me to another idea, why did these loaners want prostitution for re-payment and not let them get a job to pay it back, possibly quicker?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what Morgan said for the most part, but I wonder if the women weren&amp;#039;t giving themselves up so easily, but rather they were ignorant to the fact that the sum of money they were receiving was so little. I also found it very offensive that the bills mentioned that if a woman got pregnant while she was serving as a prostitute she would have a lengthened period when 1- she didn&amp;#039;t get pregnant by herself (meaning that the future child could be of benefit to the father in some way, or is at least still his responsibility) and 2- you can still have sex and be a prostitute while you are pregnant.... -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I think an important fact for us to consider while reading &amp;quot;Bills of Sale of Chinese Prostitutes&amp;quot; is that these amounts owed were a lot more back then. I do not believe any of these women wanted to sell themselves, but had no other option. America was the land of opportunity and even if they had to be indebted and prostituted first, nothing would keep them from these opportunities. As for Morgan&amp;#039;s question about prostitution for re-payment, the mistresses probably made decent money from their prostitutes. I wondered if perhaps the mistresses kept the immigrants for four years because they might have been able to use the immigrants’ ignorance and accrue more money than was actually owed. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that in 1875-1876 $630 a lot of money. I googled the historical value of money and $1 was worth about $14.85 meaning that $630 was equivalent to over $9300. It is unfortunate that these women had to sell themselves but that may have been the only option that they could see for themselves at the time.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I can&amp;#039;t speak to Chinese attitudes towards prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;we talked about prostitution and courtesans in my Gender in Chinese History class during the eighteenth century, and they had a different view of it than we do&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  Certainly, they felt that it was best to be a respectable wife and mother, but courtesans and prostitutes weren&amp;#039;t merely sex objects, most were educated and trained in the fine arts.  Sometimes they didn&amp;#039;t even sleep with their clients, but would just sit down and write poetry or play music with them.  Many of these women were famous for their beauty and learning, even their morality.  Of course, I&amp;#039;m not by any means trying to glorify prostitution, but still, these immigrant Chinese women may have come to the United States with a different idea of what being a prostitute meant, and that&amp;#039;s why they agreed to it, combined with the practical concern of getting themselves to America. - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with many of the comments above regarding money and how at the time it was quite a large amount to spend but I found interesting how the numbers were so precise, ie. with Loi Yau her amount was $503 for four and half years(p. 238). How did the mistresses come up with the numbers, was $503 the exact amount for travel, lodging, etc.? I also question if the women really understood everything they were in for, like kokeefe mentioned America was the land for opportunity-it may have been a better life here than in China. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The women were able to live in America without debt and be free to do as they pleased once their servitude was complete.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I do not think prostitution is the way to go or an ideal life choice, but for the women maybe it was a means of escape. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Super-disturbing.  Particularly in the first contract where, on page 238, it lists all of the ailments that would justify a return of the product.  First of all, pregnancy is mentioned as one of these &amp;quot;great sicknesses&amp;quot; and also the really hilarious, &amp;quot;&amp;#039;stone-woman,&amp;#039; i.e, inability to have carnal intercourse with men.&amp;quot;  What sort of inability would this be?  If women were willing to do this in order to leave China, even if prostitution played a different social role there, then they must have been escaping some bad situations.  Or else, they had been persuaded that much better conditions waited for them in America than actually did.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Super-disturbing&amp;quot; hits the mark. A few things I think are important to keep in mind:  inflation (that was a lot more money back then), the probability that these women did not know their options and what they were getting into, the character of the mistresses (I think it&amp;#039;s safe to say that they lied through their teeth), and the differences between prostitution in the US and the prostitution in China (these women, not intending to get into this line of work, were therefore probably not trained as cultured courtesans, and I doubt American prostitution looked at all the same as in China). I also think that the editors gave us some important context in their short description of the document on page 232:  &amp;quot;...several &amp;quot;bills of sale&amp;quot; of Chinese women who &amp;quot;consented&amp;quot; to become prostitutes..&amp;quot; The editors, in their phrasing and use of quotation marks hint that these documents were  not fully presented to or understood by the women; in all probability, they were either forged or signed under very false pretenses.  --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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== Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It was interesting to read this account after reading &amp;quot;Too Dark to be Angels.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; To me it is sad that this little girl was so eager to go, but kids I guess are naturally curious, and on top of that she had probably already subconsciously absorbed much of the pressure to assimilate. It&amp;#039;s telling that the little girl compares herself to the &amp;quot;young of a wild creature&amp;quot; (241) while on the train to school. The mother decides to send her daughter to the school because she knows there will one day soon be &amp;quot;fewer real Dakotas&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;more palefaces&amp;quot; (240), an environment that would force her daughter to assimilate. Perhaps she thought sending her to school at such a young age would save her the pain of having to give up her traditions later in life. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this story to be rather sad because I couldn&amp;#039;t help but think that she would be miserable once she got to school. Most of the other accounts that I have read did not paint the schools set up for the Native American children to be happy places. However I thought the mothers take on the situation to show an incredible amount of foresight and wisdom in regards to her peoples situation and the growing need to assimilate. It did seem though that these missionaries were very misleading in their attempt to get children to attend.--Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. A. M. Green’s account of Frontier Life, 1887 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Mrs. A. M. Green’s account of frontier life is really touching because it is probably an example of what so many other women were going through. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Although some probably had the sense of adventure to want to go exploring out west, I’m sure many were perfectly fine staying in the east with their families.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Green’s sadness but resolve to put on a happy face for her husband is an example of how women were the rock of their families and despite severe emotional turmoil, they were forced to overcome it and remain the strong person that would hold the family together. - Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree Angie, it is hard to imagine the shock that Mrs. Green felt moving to such an unfamiliar territory with her husband and two young children. This account did portray her as a brave woman persevering in a rather bleak situation. She could have accepted her husband’s offer to return home but her loyalty was stronger than her desire for comfort. I also appreciate &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;the candid nature of this entry&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; because she does express vulnerability and tenderness. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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== Violet Cragg, Ex-Slave and Former Army Nurse, requests an Army Pension, 1908 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I was intrigued about the article on Violet Cragg’s travels, because I wrote a paper on the United States Sanitary Commission last semester, and Violet was a former army nurse.  It was evident that life in the army was very hectic as she traveled many places and moved around constantly.  It made sense that she traveled so much for nursing because women were essentially the only nurses at the time and helped bring it to the forefront as a profession- Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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In Violet’s article I saw her being an object of politics, such as her being sold and moved so many times. I also suspect that she was raped especially because of the tone around the situation of her daughter’s birth that she describes: “the father of my daughter, Mrs. Ella Taylor, was Howard Whitney, a white man. I was never supported by him and was never know as his wife and never lived with him as his wife,” (pg.243). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In her appeal for a pension I didn&amp;#039;t quite understand why she decided to write so much about her life, is this because she wanted to Pension Office as much information as possible? I found that she&amp;#039;s also quite demeaning of herself, such as stating plainly “I cannot write,” (pg. 245).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She seems to think very little of herself, when she should think highly of herself having been dealt with so many trial and tribulations in her life.---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I couldn&amp;#039;t help but wonder what her chances of receiving a pension were. Especially since she was trying to get one based off her own duties as a nurse. It seemed that for most women the best chance they had of receiving a government pension was as a widow of a civil war soldier. was her husband alive while she was trying to receive her pension? I couldn&amp;#039;t tell. --Emma&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_3_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 3 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_3_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-01-28T05:07:46Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== US, 178-193, Devon Mihesuah, “’Too Dark to Be Angels’: The Class System among the Cherokees at the Female Seminary” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;One of the things that stood out to me in this article was the paradoxes.  This was full of them regarding cherokee values as well as teachings.  There seems to be great confusion between  the pure bloods and mixed-bloods.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  For example, there were many mixed-blood instructors, but no traditional cherokee teachers, yet the school was based on cherokee values.  Also, many of the teachers repressed Cherokee values, which seems to defeat the purpose of a cherokee boarding school.  Also, a girl named Na-Li defended her honor in claiming that both of her parents were full cherokee, but many of the teachers did not teach traditional values so it seems like a frivolous concern.  It appears to obtain a traditional cherokee eduaction when there were so many paradoxes between the people.-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was struck by the difference between the attitude towards Native American ancestry of the girls at the Cherokee Female Seminary (and for that matter, of the Cherokee nation as a whole during the 1800s) and modern Americans.  In the nineteenth century, it was a desirable thing to have white blood, as it indicated that one was more civilized, and whiter Cherokees held a higher status than more full-blooded ones.  Education at the seminary served to help the girls, even those who were full-blooded, become “whiter.”  Now, white Americans, when discussing their ancestry, are extremely proud of even the tiniest bit of Native American blood they might contain.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I can think of very few people with whom I’ve discussed ancestry with that don’t claim to have at least one Native American in the family, myself included.  I think that perhaps it has something to do with&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; our romantic view of Native Americans&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and a desire to show that we don’t feel animosity towards them any longer.  - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Alice on her analysis in regards to pride about having Native American ancestry. There are also a number of other things that surprised me while reading this. I was surprised that the &amp;quot;mixed-blood&amp;quot; families were more accepted in society and received better. Though I understand their skin was lighter, in many cases even today, biracial or people with a variety of ethnic backgrounds are ostracized from both groups. I was also slightly surprised by the division among the Cherokee. Whether mixed-blood or not, I was expecting some sense of unity that did not occur. Looking back into history, many people remember their roots or where they came from, this is not the case in this situation. This alone could have proved detrimental to the efforts of Native Americans at this time.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;On page 190 of “Too Dark to be Angles,” I found these two sentences to be contradictory to the rest of the article. First, “The girls’ seminary experiences helped to strengthen their identities as Cherokees…” Second, “Both the progressive and the traditional tribal members considered themselves to be more Cherokee than the other group.”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think the reason that these sentences threw me off is because throughout the reading I the author gave numerous examples of how full-blooded Cherokees were discriminated against within the seminary. Those Cherokees that were mixed blooded were considered more intelligent because they were whiter. So, it just seems a little contradictory to argue that the seminary schools (that didn’t teach anything of the Cherokee language or culture) brought about a strong Cherokee identity to its students. -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that the school did work to develop a Cherokee identity in its students, just not a traditional identity and not one that we would imagine as Cherokee today. Yes, some of the girls only had trace amounts of Cherokee ancestry, but they still identified strongly as Cherokee. It&amp;#039;s just that they identified with an assimilated form of Cherokee identity, one that emulated white society. They ridiculed the darker, less assimilated girls not for being Cherokee per se, but for not embracing their version of what it meant to be Cherokee. As for the girls being bullied for their skin tone and traditions, they may have come to identify more strongly with their traditional Cherokee roots in the face of opposition. So both groups did maintain a connection to a Cherokee identity, it&amp;#039;s just that, as the article states, &amp;quot;there were differences in opinion as to what a Cherokee really was.&amp;quot; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;While reading the article “Too Dark to Be Angels” I found that it parallels to the story of “Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884”.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Both speak about the Indian women’s seminaries, it isn’t our-right spoken in Zitkala-Sa’s article, but it’s implied in her wanting to go East “crossed the Missouri in the evening…we stopped before a massive brick building,” (pg.241). I also found a parallel that men have taken advantage of women as objects here as well. “The Cherokee National Council was controlled by progressive, educated, mixed-blood tribesmen,” (pg. 178). Once again dictating what women learn about or shall act while in such seminary; to mold and bend them into what they see fit. ---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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Another point I did not understand at first was why the darker girls, who had more Cherokee blood were being made fun of because of it. “Mixed-blood students frequently scorned those girls who had less white blood and darker skin,” (pg.180). Is this not a school for assimilation for the Cherokee girls? Reading further in I found that the women and girls of this school strive to be “equal” to white women, as “anything ‘white’ was ideal” stated Kate O’Donald Ringland, (pg.181). For this fact, to be as white as possible, the seminary’s repressed all Cherokee values and “offered no courses focusing on Cherokee culture,” (pg.178). ---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Erin brings up a great point that I did not catch myself.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Although the schools did seem to instill a sense of Cherokee within in the women, I think the schools main accomplishment was the desire to be more &amp;quot;white&amp;quot;,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; as Morgan points out.  I think this was really emphasized through the perceptions of intelligence among the girls at the seminary and the teaching that was going on.  As quoted on page 181, Albert Sydney Wyly &amp;quot;expressed his impatience with the full-blood girls by referring to the mixed-bloods as &amp;quot;whiter&amp;quot; and therefore &amp;quot;more intellectual&amp;quot;.  I think these schools were set up to Americanize the Native American population, rather than instill Cherokee ideals. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it truly disturbing that female teachers exemplified multiple cases of insensitivity throughout this reading. The teachers, though white, should have recognized the similarities between themselves and the Cherokee girls they were responsible for. At this point in time, women had few rights, neither did the Cherokee. It would have been more productive to encourage the young girls, in turn making it easier for them to assimilate, if that was in fact their main goal.--MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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What I thought was interesting about the Cherokee Indian Seminary for girls was that there was class difference within that Cherokee society.  Those that looked more white versus those that did not basing emphasis on what amount of Cherokee the girls had in them.  The more white blood in them, the better status they had at the seminary.  Some of the girls did not even know their native language and others did might help explain some of the division.  I don’t think the teachers helped with that either.  These girls had pressures from what was expected of them in “white” roles and at the same time trying to maintain their traditional roles in Native American society.  These girls being defined as either “full blooded“ and “mixed blood” became intermingled with the pressures to fit in.  --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it surprising that the Cherokee National Council was made up Cherokee that were mostly mixed blood and prescribed to upper-class Southern antebellum values. Many of the girls who attended the seminary were from slave holding families. Considering that many of them ascribed to white values and had the appearance of whites, why did they even acknowledge themselves as Cherokee when they felt that Cherokee were inferior to whites? Why didn’t these girls just go to a regular school, leaving the more traditional, “uneducated” girls who wanted to learn about white society to go to the Cherokee seminaries? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting in “Too Dark to be Angels,” that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;despite how many girls could have been traumatized by the racism against them, the seminary actually helped many girls get ahead in life.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; At the very end of the article, Mihesuah says “despite its shortcomings, the Cherokee seminary was unquestionably the catalyst for the prosperity of many Cherokee women and their families.” (p. 191) Yes, the seminary made it almost impossible to keep one’s culture, but at the same time, it made it possible for many girls to succeed who would not previously have been able to. The school taught subjects like latin and math that other white schools would have been teaching, thereby allowing Cherokee girls to take part in mainstream society. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked reading the essay &amp;quot;Too Dark to Be Angels.&amp;quot; I thought there were multiple interesting points in the article. In particular I thought how the full-blood Cherokee girls were treated resembled what can be found at high schools even today. Some students today are still picked on because of their race or because they are of lower class. The reading talked about how the girls were sometimes left out because they were falling behind academically and were not able to go on outings with the older high school girls and also were unable to afford party clothes and/or after-dinner snacks. These types of things made the full-blood Cherokee girls feel inferior and they can also make girls in schools today feel left out or inferior to the upper class or other white females. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked Amy&amp;#039;s point above. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Even back in 19th century Cherokee seminaries, there were still mean girl cliques.  A tale as old as time...&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Also, I have the same questions as Taylor. Why did the girls consider themselves Cherokee still if they resembled and lived like the white southerners and felt inferior to them for being Cherokees.. I was astounded as to how European the girls in the photos looked, and then I read the captions where one stated the girls pictured were 1/32 Cherokee. I was quite shocked to learn how even those very distantly-related Cherokee girls considered themselves Cherokee even when they had never even  heard the language or witnessed any tribal functions/ceremonies. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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It is interesting that both the mixed-blood and full-blood Cherokee girls in seminary identified with their Cherokee origins, and that each felt that they were the more “in touch” with their lineage than the other group. It seems that one’s perception of their identity had more of an impact on who they became than solely genetic factors. Those who had lighter skin knew that they had more options socially than those who were darker, because they fit in better with the notion that the white society was the more desirable. Yet at the same time, they did not identify completely with the white culture they sought to mix into, instead they wanted to be identified as Cherokee.  I find it interesting as well that the society that had previously held the “one drop” policy that restricted African Americans did not seem to have the same effect on schooling for Native Americans (perhaps I missed that section in the readings but that struck me as slightly different)--jmarshal &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Christine L. the cliques inside the seminary were similar to the cliques we see today in movies such as Mean Girls, it shows that we have not changed much throughout history and that the class system exists with the influence of monetary status. The girls who were full-blood were not open to the full possibilites education had to offer because they were not able to attend primary school, but I found it interesting that they were still able to maintain good grades. While, some of the girls could not stay long in the seminary due to family or financial reasons they still maintained grades close to the mixed girls. I wondered how many students the seminary accepted? If there was a limit and even with the comments from the superintendent why were so many full-blooded girls accepted when they faced criticism for being themselves? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Some of the passages I found most striking in this article involved the feelings of inferiority that were internalized by the students, particularly those who had more Cherokee blood.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Na-li expresses happily that &amp;quot;My complexion does not prevent me from acquiring knowledge and being useful hereafter.&amp;quot; [p. 182]  That they were so able to associate their own heritage and skin color with their inferior social standing demonstrates the ways that the seminary failed them culturally.  On page 185, a male Cherokee seminary graduate celebrates his &amp;quot;whiteness&amp;quot; and says &amp;quot;it is the white blood that made us what we are.&amp;quot;  It just seems like a pretty high price to pay to find success outside of the Cherokee community.  - Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like the the primary attitude and atmosphere of the female seminary was racial ignorance, as seen on Page 181 which says, &amp;quot;The teachers also relentlessly reinforced the importance of learning and retaining the values of white society.&amp;quot; It seemed as though the school&amp;#039;s main goal was to force any &amp;quot;full-blood&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;half-blood&amp;quot; students to assimilate into the white society, disregarding any traditions or remnants of their previous Cherokee lives. While the seminary prided itself on creating upstanding young women, it also made them very rude, with the attitude of &amp;quot;i&amp;#039;m better than you.&amp;quot; There is a prime example on P. 182, which says, &amp;quot;In comparing her tribe and theirs, she pointed out that the Osages listened attentively to the seminarians sing &amp;#039;Over There,&amp;#039; because, she figured, at least the &amp;#039;wild and untutored Savage has an ear for music as well as the cultivated and refined.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; The girls may have left seminary &amp;quot;more refined&amp;quot; but in reality, they were just Cherokee girls who threw away their old values and family traditions to transform into a woman more acceptable by white society. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== US, 194-220, Paige Raibmon, “The Practice of Everyday Colonialism: Indigenous Women at Work in the Hop Fields and Tourist Industry of Puget Sound” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Like Alice, I was struck at how the view of Native Americans has changed. Paige Raibmon mentions in her article how Native American women in the 19th century were seen a subhuman because they could &amp;quot;endure childbirth painlessly&amp;quot; (199). This excuse was used to justify using them for hard manual labor. I was also shocked to discover that the Native Americans picking hops were not seen as laborers, but instead were objects for tourists to gawk at. Finally, Mihesuah mentions in her article several times that the Native Americans saw themselves as being less intelligent and less culturally valuable than whites. As Alice mentions, now many Americans glorify their Native American heritage. It seems that now we are still influenced by the same views as the white 19th century tourists were. Many Americans see their Native American ancestry as a sense of freedom and a reminder of simpler times and simply ignore the hardships their ancestors went through.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found the act that a pregnancy didn’t slow down Indigenous women from working&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and that the managers would pay their workers for giving birth for working. “Ezra Meeker, who paid a dollar to employees who gave birth while working on his farm, new mothers where back in the fields within two days, babies at their sides,” (pg.199).  I cannot believe that this really happened!---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I found that the Indigenous women were also seen as a tourist attraction too, “the spectacle of authentic Indians,” (pg.201) as if people had never seen such a thing. These people, who use to dominate the population of their American homeland were now the minority and seen as passive tourist luxuries.  The “curios” that the Indigenous women created were now being bought by white women and seen as a foreign object to add to the look of their homes, “no home is complete now-a-days without a neat and artistically arranged Indian basket corner,” (pg.203).  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;These women really seen as a sideshow in that “viewing and assessing migrant Indian women’s labor and lives became one of the pleasurable acts of public consumption through which women constituted themselves as modern,” (pg.203).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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To me, this article highlighted a change in the way that Americans viewed Native Americans. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In the span of a few decades, white Americans went from fearing the &amp;#039;savages&amp;#039; to planning vacations around watching the newly docile Native Americans working on the hops farms. And the perception of Native American women played a large role in that shift.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Women were often the ones in the fields working, picking hops with babies and children nearby and so providing a domestic front that replaced the old warrior image. Women also made many of the crafts that became popular with the white tourists. Their work became the must have pieces in white middle class homes, and suddenly Native Americans were seen as the producers of mildly exotic talking pieces rather than a threat to family and farm. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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Indigenous women workers were often engaged in “traditional culture” and “modern labor” at the same time. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;But what defines “traditional?” The author writes, “workers frequently used income from ‘modern’ wage labor to meet ‘traditional’ obligations to kin and community and to invest in Indigenous economies” (196). Wage labor didn’t assimilate these Indians, as they just used the money to maintain their culture. But in the case of meeting obligations to kin, Indian wage laborers weren’t really different than any other wage laborer. Also, couldn’t an Indian woman who gets paid to pick hops but also weaves a basket to sell be comparable to a white woman who gets paid to work in a factory but also sews a quilt to sell? Both weaving and sewing could be considered &amp;quot;traditional&amp;quot; activities, so wouldn&amp;#039;t that mean that whites could also simultaneously engage in &amp;quot;traditional culture&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;modern labor?&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Squaw drudges who failed to embody the proper gendered division of labor were implicitly to blame for both their own oppression and men&amp;#039;s dissolution&amp;quot; (p. 199).  These working class Indigenous women were trying to support their families in any way possible, but of course they were still expected to remain in the home, in the private sphere.  When they were seen working harder than men, they were immediately blamed for all of the men&amp;#039;s laziness instead of being praised for their hard labor and determintion to support their families.  They were especially looked down on when they accepted money from tourists who treated them as &amp;quot;tourist attractions&amp;quot; (p. 201).  However, as the article mentions, this income was often more reliable than what they received for fieldwork.  I think this gives us a good glimpse at the society of the late nineteenth century, where people expected the impossible and never considered the reality.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Today these women are known for all the hard labor they went through to support their families and to survive, hardly what they were known for during their time.  I think we also try to remember the discrimination and obstacles they faced as an indigenous peoples.  They were not seen as normal, everyday people, but as &amp;quot;field hands,&amp;quot;vanishing Indians&amp;quot; (p.201), tourist attractions, &amp;quot;subjects&amp;quot; for photographs (p. 202), and manual laborers.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I was really struck by the way the author said that indigenous women at this time were “dehumanized.” I had never really thought about it in that context, but it is true with the way white women thought about Indians. Because they were closely affiliated with nature and because of the belief that they didn’t feel pain during childbirth, they were no longer women or even really human. This is why it was so easy for white women to treat them as a sort of spectacle as opposed to real people. They acted the complete opposite from how women were supposed to act. -  Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I really couldn&amp;#039;t believe the way the indigenous people, women in particular were viewed and treated by the white people. I can&amp;#039;t believe that groups of people actually went to where the laborers were working to watch and see a &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; &amp;quot;tradtional&amp;quot; Native American. So these white families or individuals went to look at them for fun and then scrutinized those same workers for what they bought with their money, what clothes they wore, and how they tried to act more &amp;quot;white?&amp;quot; I thought that was crazy. I think the white Americans should really have thought of something better to do with their time. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== MP, 252-258-- Deena Gonzalez, “Life and Legend of Gertrudis Barcelo in 19th C. Sante Fe” (2005) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In reading &amp;quot;The Life and Legend of Getrudis Barcelo in the Ninteenth-Century Santa Fe,&amp;quot; I was very intrigued how different life seemed to be out in the western United States.  He mentions how people like Barcelo had simply gone into a town and were occassionally able to change it.  Gonzalez openly discusses brothels, gambling, and other activities that were not seen as much in the eastern United States.  The most interesting fact was that &amp;quot;women were expected to defer to men but did not.&amp;quot; This appears very different to the rest of the U.S. where the gender roles were very strict.  It seems that out west it was much easier to live a more care-free life.-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Gertrudis Barceló was a really cool woman for her time! She was a smart businesswoman who made a lot of money and owned a lot of property. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;One of her more profitable endeavors was opening a saloon (p255), “she made the saloon the hub of the town’s social and economic life and at the hall she kept abreast of the latest political developments.” Her success gave her independence, but also violated female codes of behavior of the time.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; However, the author gives Gertrudis Barceló a lot of credit that the saloon was an establishment where men who spoke different languages could come together and gamble and drink, and as they did this stereotypes were broken and fears and prejudices eroded. I am curious as to how intentional this was on the part of Gertrudis Barceló. Was she truly trying to break barriers, or was she looking to capitalize on the situation and make money? Does it really matter? – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I just wanted to throw in that I googled Gertrudis Barceló after doing the reading, and I found it interesting that she sided with the Americans during the war. She gave the Americans valuable information and even loaned them money. I think it is pretty clear that she was incredibly intelligent. (source: http://www.britannica.com/hispanic_heritage/article-9124916) -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed the story of Doña Gertrudis Barceló in that she was a woman who took charge and made something of herself unlike the white women who were quick to subdue themselves to men. “her success as a business women and gambler gave her unique independence ordinarily denied women,” (pg.254). Even as a women she was seen as so successful and powerful that “politicians and military officers alike went seeking her opinion or involved her in their discussions about trade or the army,” (pg.255). Never before have I heard of a women being consulted by military men and political men! Barceló also helped in integrating people among different cultures, “she set the stage as well for the second, when women began marrying the newcomers,” (pg.257). I really see Barceló as a role model type no matter if she was into gambling and possibly running a brothel, she was able to make a name for herself even as a woman.---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this reading on Gertrudis Barcelo very, very interesting! Her story seemed very inspiring and I thought her impact on the Euro-American settlers was quite profound.  I think an important point that was made in the piece is how quick American settlers were to judge peoples they had never met.  I liked how Barcelo was a woman who was able to help these new protestant men adapt, for lack of a better term to a new society, &amp;quot;They could judge the locals firsthand and could observe a community&amp;#039;s values and habits through a single activity,  After they had a few drinks, their initial fears and prejudices gradually yielded to the relaxed, sociable atmosphere of the gambling hall...&amp;quot;(257)  Although, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I do think it is important to realize that this is just one snapshot of a woman going above and beyond what was typically expected of a woman.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I agree with Morgan, she was definitely able to make a name for herself, especially in the presence of white men who probably viewed themselves as racially and culturally superior.  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought Gertrudis Barceló was very interesting because she was innovative and smart.  She was Spanish and stood out from those traditional female American roles.  I don’t think she bought into that same notion that some  women did of what was expected of them.  Her business was a lucrative one and she seized opportunities to make money.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;If she had been a man we would have never heard about her.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   --MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that the thing that stood out from this article the most wasn&amp;#039;t just her personal account of what had happened to her, but rather the statement on page 256 &amp;quot;To the protestant mind, nothing short of the complete elimination of gambling would lift New Mexicans out of their servility and make them worthy of United States citizenship. The Jacksonian Americans wanted to replace gambling with industry and enterprise&amp;quot; because this statement can be tweaked in so many different ways throughout American history so that the &amp;quot;(White) Protestants&amp;quot; can use their alleged superiority to promote morals within a different racial or ethnic group. Yet, I&amp;#039;d be willing to believe that white protestants could be found partaking in said gambling. --Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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Gertrudis Barceló was undeniably a fascinating, intelligent and successful woman. One of the things that amused me as I read her story was the reasoning behind her antagonists&amp;#039; animosity. For her fellow Spanish-American women, jealous of her success and freedom, slandered her whenever they could (p. 254). I also found it interesting that for some Protestants, despite the fact that she was industrious and resourceful, the means of her wealth made her unworthy of her praise. While for others, like Josiah Gregg, Barceló was admirable, despite the saloon and gambling, because &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;her money &amp;quot;eventually helped elevate her moral character&amp;quot; (253).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this article incredibly fascinating. I thought it was interesting how the perception of Barceló as an &amp;quot;immoral woman&amp;quot; who &amp;quot;dressed outrageously&amp;quot; was then generalized to include all of the women in Santa Fe. A factor that contributed to Barceló&amp;#039;s notoriety was suspicions of her running a brothel. Surely there were also a smattering of white women engaged in the same act of &amp;quot;moral laxity&amp;quot;, although perhaps not of the same caliber as Barceló. However, the overall perception of white women still remained pure and chaste while the women of Santa Fe were perceived in a whole new manner because of just one woman. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Erin--thanks for the link! It seems to me that Barceló was an amazing woman, one of those larger-than-life characters that make such excellent stories. I found it interesting how Gonzalez tried to separate the facts of Barceló&amp;#039;s life from the fictions created and written about her. Her true life and nature are very much a mystery, cross-referenced from accounts of the period.  --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this reading to be the most interesting. Gertrudis Barceló was able to change the behavior of western women through a saloon, and not only that..she was a woman, making big bucks. Dancing, smoking, gambling makes it sound like her saloon was the modern-day club of the time. Because their was a &amp;quot;disjunction between the idealized married life and the conditions that stood in the way of its realization...such as taking in boarders or having children out of wedlock&amp;quot;(255), she was able to pull off this &amp;quot;step outside the boundaries of her society&amp;quot;. -- David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susan Shelby Magoffin’s diary about her first days in Santa Fe, 1846 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Susan Shelby seems to find the positive in living in and travelling through New Mexico and the West, unlike Mrs. A. M. Green.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  This is probably due to the fact that she keeps herself busy with housework, improving her Spanish, and getting to know the locals.  I enjoyed reading the prejudices Shelby believes of the Mexicans.  She is surprised to find that her Mexican servant, who she was quick to call &amp;quot;one of the numbskulls&amp;quot; (p. 234), is actually quite smart and picks up on things very quickly.  She also realizes the Mexicans&amp;#039; intelligence when they offer her useful help and advice with things that Shelby believes may be &amp;quot;the first of the kind they have ever seen&amp;quot; (p. 235).  Shelby also seems to imply that the Mexicans are gaudy and extravagant with their parties when she is describing the managerie.  It is important to note that she is surprised to discover that when rich Mexicans &amp;quot;attend a place of the kind to take a servant along and while sitting to use them as an article of furniture&amp;quot; (p. 236).  To me, this appears to be the point where Shelby is realizing that even the Mexicans have a hierarchal system; they are not all stupid servants.  Another highlight of Shelby&amp;#039;s diary is where she points out her place in society - well, more like her place in the home, really.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;On Friday the 4th, she writes about putting all of her energy, and her servant&amp;#039;s energy in to cleaning the house.  She is determined to do her &amp;quot;duty so well so as to gain one bright smile and sweet kiss from [her] good, kind husband&amp;quot; (p. 234).  I think this is a great example of the separate spheres and the idea that these women had of making the homes perfect, romanticized places for their husbands to return.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Apparently it is so serious, she may not receive her husband&amp;#039;s acceptance and affection when he returns home!  Although, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it seems like that would be due to her punishing herself rather than a punishment from her husband.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rape of Indian women in CA, 1862 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The anonymous account of the Rape of Indian women was interesting and upsetting. The writer is obviously outraged by the egregious acts of the “supposed” United States Officers and their utter lack of respect for the Native Americans. In my opinion there were two messages posted in this letter. The obvious issue with the rape of course, but the writer also makes a point to note “Whether he found a fit subject to practice his virtuous and civilizing purposes, the writer in not informed.” (p 237)  This seems like an intentional dig at the “civilizing” practices of the Americans in regards to the natives. The writer illustrates the irony in these practices through his letter; rape is an uncivilized and immoral act, in this case perpetrated by the very people who are attempting to “civilize” the native people of the land.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was surprised to see that this was published in a newspaper. While it is upsetting, disgusting, immoral, etc. I wouldn&amp;#039;t think that newspapers of the time would have had the courage to publish such a piece against the stationed soldiers.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  It does go to show that people were taking note of the uncivilized nature of the Americans (as Caryn said) and the irony of the whole situation. Would something like this be followed up on by law enforcement, or simply shrugged off?  - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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== Bills of Sale of Chinese Prostitutes, 1875-1876 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Through the whole of the Sale of Chinese Prostitutes documents the women were used as objects of prostitution to their owners to which they owed money to.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; What I do not understand is why did these women so easily give over the use of their body for such little owed money for such a long period of time?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; And I highly doubt any of the three women actually fulfilled their time of four years thus adding more years onto the sentence.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;And why would they let themselves be prostituted for borrowing such a little amount of money? $630, $470, $503, all under a thousand and yet they had to serve for 4 years in each instance. Shouldn’t they stick up for themselves and get an actual job to pay back the loan? That brings me to another idea, why did these loaners want prostitution for re-payment and not let them get a job to pay it back, possibly quicker?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;---Morgan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what Morgan said for the most part, but I wonder if the women weren&amp;#039;t giving themselves up so easily, but rather they were ignorant to the fact that the sum of money they were receiving was so little. I also found it very offensive that the bills mentioned that if a woman got pregnant while she was serving as a prostitute she would have a lengthened period when 1- she didn&amp;#039;t get pregnant by herself (meaning that the future child could be of benefit to the father in some way, or is at least still his responsibility) and 2- you can still have sex and be a prostitute while you are pregnant.... -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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I think an important fact for us to consider while reading &amp;quot;Bills of Sale of Chinese Prostitutes&amp;quot; is that these amounts owed were a lot more back then. I do not believe any of these women wanted to sell themselves, but had no other option. America was the land of opportunity and even if they had to be indebted and prostituted first, nothing would keep them from these opportunities. As for Morgan&amp;#039;s question about prostitution for re-payment, the mistresses probably made decent money from their prostitutes. I wondered if perhaps the mistresses kept the immigrants for four years because they might have been able to use the immigrants’ ignorance and accrue more money than was actually owed. --kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that in 1875-1876 $630 a lot of money. I googled the historical value of money and $1 was worth about $14.85 meaning that $630 was equivalent to over $9300. It is unfortunate that these women had to sell themselves but that may have been the only option that they could see for themselves at the time.  –Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I can&amp;#039;t speak to Chinese attitudes towards prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;we talked about prostitution and courtesans in my Gender in Chinese History class during the eighteenth century, and they had a different view of it than we do&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  Certainly, they felt that it was best to be a respectable wife and mother, but courtesans and prostitutes weren&amp;#039;t merely sex objects, most were educated and trained in the fine arts.  Sometimes they didn&amp;#039;t even sleep with their clients, but would just sit down and write poetry or play music with them.  Many of these women were famous for their beauty and learning, even their morality.  Of course, I&amp;#039;m not by any means trying to glorify prostitution, but still, these immigrant Chinese women may have come to the United States with a different idea of what being a prostitute meant, and that&amp;#039;s why they agreed to it, combined with the practical concern of getting themselves to America. - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with many of the comments above regarding money and how at the time it was quite a large amount to spend but I found interesting how the numbers were so precise, ie. with Loi Yau her amount was $503 for four and half years(p. 238). How did the mistresses come up with the numbers, was $503 the exact amount for travel, lodging, etc.? I also question if the women really understood everything they were in for, like kokeefe mentioned America was the land for opportunity-it may have been a better life here than in China. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The women were able to live in America without debt and be free to do as they pleased once their servitude was complete.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I do not think prostitution is the way to go or an ideal life choice, but for the women maybe it was a means of escape. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Super-disturbing.  Particularly in the first contract where, on page 238, it lists all of the ailments that would justify a return of the product.  First of all, pregnancy is mentioned as one of these &amp;quot;great sicknesses&amp;quot; and also the really hilarious, &amp;quot;&amp;#039;stone-woman,&amp;#039; i.e, inability to have carnal intercourse with men.&amp;quot;  What sort of inability would this be?  If women were willing to do this in order to leave China, even if prostitution played a different social role there, then they must have been escaping some bad situations.  Or else, they had been persuaded that much better conditions waited for them in America than actually did.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;quot;Super-disturbing&amp;quot; hits the mark. A few things I think are important to keep in mind:  inflation (that was a lot more money back then), the probability that these women did not know their options and what they were getting into, the character of the mistresses (I think it&amp;#039;s safe to say that they lied through their teeth), and the differences between prostitution in the US and the prostitution in China (these women, not intending to get into this line of work, were therefore probably not trained as cultured courtesans, and I doubt American prostitution looked at all the same as in China). I also think that the editors gave us some important context in their short description of the document on page 232:  &amp;quot;...several &amp;quot;bills of sale&amp;quot; of Chinese women who &amp;quot;consented&amp;quot; to become prostitutes..&amp;quot; The editors, in their phrasing and use of quotation marks hint that these documents were  not fully presented to or understood by the women; in all probability, they were either forged or signed under very false pretenses.  --Sarah Smethurst&lt;br /&gt;
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== Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It was interesting to read this account after reading &amp;quot;Too Dark to be Angels.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; To me it is sad that this little girl was so eager to go, but kids I guess are naturally curious, and on top of that she had probably already subconsciously absorbed much of the pressure to assimilate. It&amp;#039;s telling that the little girl compares herself to the &amp;quot;young of a wild creature&amp;quot; (241) while on the train to school. The mother decides to send her daughter to the school because she knows there will one day soon be &amp;quot;fewer real Dakotas&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;more palefaces&amp;quot; (240), an environment that would force her daughter to assimilate. Perhaps she thought sending her to school at such a young age would save her the pain of having to give up her traditions later in life. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this story to be rather sad because I couldn&amp;#039;t help but think that she would be miserable once she got to school. Most of the other accounts that I have read did not paint the schools set up for the Native American children to be happy places. However I thought the mothers take on the situation to show an incredible amount of foresight and wisdom in regards to her peoples situation and the growing need to assimilate. It did seem though that these missionaries were very misleading in their attempt to get children to attend.--Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. A. M. Green’s account of Frontier Life, 1887 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Mrs. A. M. Green’s account of frontier life is really touching because it is probably an example of what so many other women were going through. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Although some probably had the sense of adventure to want to go exploring out west, I’m sure many were perfectly fine staying in the east with their families.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Green’s sadness but resolve to put on a happy face for her husband is an example of how women were the rock of their families and despite severe emotional turmoil, they were forced to overcome it and remain the strong person that would hold the family together. - Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree Angie, it is hard to imagine the shock that Mrs. Green felt moving to such an unfamiliar territory with her husband and two young children. This account did portray her as a brave woman persevering in a rather bleak situation. She could have accepted her husband’s offer to return home but her loyalty was stronger than her desire for comfort. I also appreciate &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;the candid nature of this entry&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; because she does express vulnerability and tenderness. -Caryn&lt;br /&gt;
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== Violet Cragg, Ex-Slave and Former Army Nurse, requests an Army Pension, 1908 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I was intrigued about the article on Violet Cragg’s travels, because I wrote a paper on the United States Sanitary Commission last semester, and Violet was a former army nurse.  It was evident that life in the army was very hectic as she traveled many places and moved around constantly.  It made sense that she traveled so much for nursing because women were essentially the only nurses at the time and helped bring it to the forefront as a profession- Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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In Violet’s article I saw her being an object of politics, such as her being sold and moved so many times. I also suspect that she was raped especially because of the tone around the situation of her daughter’s birth that she describes: “the father of my daughter, Mrs. Ella Taylor, was Howard Whitney, a white man. I was never supported by him and was never know as his wife and never lived with him as his wife,” (pg.243). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In her appeal for a pension I didn&amp;#039;t quite understand why she decided to write so much about her life, is this because she wanted to Pension Office as much information as possible? I found that she&amp;#039;s also quite demeaning of herself, such as stating plainly “I cannot write,” (pg. 245).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She seems to think very little of herself, when she should think highly of herself having been dealt with so many trial and tribulations in her life.---Morgan M.&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_2_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 2 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_2_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-01-21T04:05:32Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Elsa Barkley Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom: Reconstructing Southern Black Women’s Political History, 1865-1880” */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Comments/questions comparing the articles ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Alice Fahs, “The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of War, 1861-1900” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Based on a paper I wrote on the United States Sanitary Commission last semester, this was a very interesting essay to read.  Fahs mentions that the war still follows the &amp;quot;masculanized culture&amp;quot; that was in place at the time and through my research I discovered the same things.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Much of the standard literature was centered around the fighting and the man&amp;#039;s roles on the battlefield, yet women&amp;#039;s roles on and off the battlefield cannot be forgotten.  It is interesting how literature giving credit to women must be labeled as &amp;quot;feminist&amp;quot; literature, when in reality, they should be given the same treatment as men&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. -- Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found it very interesting how she discusses the different type of surrering that women endured.  Men endured the horrors of war and their suffering was very physical and visual.  Women, however, also suffered but they experienced strictly emotional suffering.  They were cut deeply by these emotional wounds of not knowing weather their loved-ones were safe on the battlefield and some argued that these wounds cut deeper than those of men.  Where men simply died on the battlefield, women had to endure the death of a loved one, while still remaining strong, and now being forced to provide for themselves. -- Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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It&amp;#039;s interesting how Civil War literature shifted from a focus on the tribulations of northern women to those of southern women.  And &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;despite a strong emphasis on realistic literature, southern women and antebellum plantation life was highly romanticized.  This probably came in part from a desire to both remember a time when the nation was united (which can also be seen in the popularity of stories centered around the Revolution)and to try to create a new identity centered around northern and southern reconciliation and &amp;quot;white&amp;quot; ideals.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I can&amp;#039;t help but think about &amp;quot;Gone With the Wind&amp;quot; whenever they mentioned southern woman&amp;#039;s literature after the war (which they eventually did mention in the reading)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
I know that the depiction found within that novel is unrealistic, but the romanticizing of the civil war and the southern woman&amp;#039;s role in it IS interesting to read and find relations to even in today&amp;#039;s non-antebellum southern world..... -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think it is important to keep in mind that literature is largely written for an audience, and yet, this literature is what shapes the public memory of an event&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. The dominant forms of fiction at the outset of the war were women’s domestic novels. This impacts what type of literature was written during the war. It should come as no surprise that during the war, “the literary marketplace supported an outpouring of popular literature portraying women’s domestic participation in the war.” This domestic participation includes working, sacrifice, and loss, some even argue that the women sacrificed more than the men who were fighting. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;However, there was a shift in literature with the rise of Civil War veterans organizations. This led to a shift in who were the bearers of the war’s memory from women to veterans.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It is amazing how the Civil War has become, “a white male conflict, rather than a cataclysmic event that rent and remade the fabric of life for all Americans.” – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Throughout the reading on the Feminized Civil War, I kept asking myself where the women had gone; it was as if their memory of the Civil War had disappeared entirely. I was pleased when I came across Mary Livermore who, in 1887, spoke out against where the literature about the civil war was going. She argued that the story of Northern women was missing.  Then, in 1889 Edward Bellamy, stated that, “many pictures of battles have been painted, but no true one yet, for the pictures contain only men. The women are unaccountably left out.” Finally, there was Elizabeth Stuart Phelps who actually “undermined stereotypes of veterans” and “challenged the veteran dominated culture of remembrance itself.” I was just happy to see that women were not entirely forgotten in the decades following the Civil War. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am curious as to how the majority of women felt when their impacts on the war became largely overlooked, especially after all of the pain and loss that they had experienced.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It seems as time moved on after the Civil War it increasingly became to be defined as a &amp;quot;Man&amp;#039;s War&amp;quot;, specifically a &amp;quot;White Man&amp;#039;s War&amp;quot;.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; All of the domestic issues women faced, such as caring for children, the home, and earning a living, faded with the passage of time. It appears that a romanticized portrait of the war was painted in which much of the heart-ache and problems women faced on an everyday basis were pushed to the wayside in favor of remembering the great battles and generals of the day. This is yet another example of how women were forgotten in the shadow of their men. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Anna Holman&amp;#039;s approach that the Civil War had largely (and unfortunately) came to be defined as a &amp;quot;Man&amp;#039;s War.&amp;quot; I also found it interesting that they begin to recognize the importance of the woman in everyday life, thought the focus was only on the mother initially. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;On page 133, Fahs points out that, &amp;quot;women especially mothers, personalized the nation, that they link the private and public realms.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Not only does Fahs point out that women were in a sense the backbone of the nation, but they were also able to tie together the separate spheres. --MDvorak &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with both Anna and MDvorak here.  I found it interesting how the reading referred to the war as a &amp;quot;Man&amp;#039;s War&amp;quot;.  Fahs focused a lot of attention on the emotional side of women during the war, but the connection of their emotions to the men in their lives and the country, I think, is most important.  I believe it showed that the suffering aspect a of war produced a personal connection to the war for women, especially when they were not directly involved (on the battlefield, for instance). Also, I found the shift away from women after the war in publications was extremely important in understanding how people at this time, particularly men, viewed the war.     -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I also agree with the above three statements. I find it interesting that women were seen as the emotional backbone of the nation which would seem to imply that they were seen as an important aspect of the war-if the sons were not properly &amp;quot;sent off&amp;quot; or supported by the mother who they looked to for emotional strength then it would be hard to determine how they would have been able to survive the horrors of war even remotely emotionally intact. However, it seems as if this important contribution was greatly overshadowed by the carnage of war. It makes everyday strength and courage appear as a lesser virtue than uncommon courage in the face of sudden and inescapable danger. WHere did these men learn that strength? From the readings it would be the mother who taught this trait and yet the mother gets virtually no credit. -jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
I also completely agree with Erin Sanderson&amp;#039;s statement in which she discusses how after men returned from the war, the literature market increasingly became dominated by men&amp;#039;s war stories. The interests of women were again pushed away for those of men. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised to find out that the Civil War was so feminized during the war and directly following it. The war has definitely become masculine in the public memory, and it makes me want to take a look at how the public images of other wars have changed. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Why was there a focus on the Northern women’s war in Civil War literature in the first place? Was it because they were the only ones around that had the opportunity to read it? Many Northern men would have been fighting, and in the South, both men and women would have had larger concerns than publishing and reading literature. How come when the war once again entered popular memory in the 1880s, it became focused on the masculine aspects of the war? The article mentions a shift away from Victorian feminine literature towards realist literature. Was there some sort of demographic change in readership?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems as though the media played a larger role during and after the civil war.  From the material read, it seemed to have expressed sadness, pride, and Patriotism of people’s experiences of the War.  Women&amp;#039;s writing was more prominent because the men were away in war.  But when the men came home their stories needed to be told.  I think this symbolizes men returning to the public sphere.  I think the type of stories told says something about men and women&amp;#039;s roles.  In these stories about women you see the emotional side and in men&amp;#039;s stories they were more about glory and valor. The change from fiction to more non-fiction stories is interesting.  Could this have been because people had just dealt with real emotions, those including pain and sorrow, were ready for something real?  Was it something they could better relate to?  --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I too was initially a little surprised to find that stories about women dominated much of the media at the time, but it really makes sense considering women were the ones remaining home and actually buying and reading the publications of the day. These women understandably wanted stories that they could relate to and that emphasized the importance of their own contributions to the war effort. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It also may have been a not so subtle nudge on behalf of the powers-that-be to encourage women, for purely practical reasons, to continue to support the men at war. After all, soldiers who had the support of their families, even if the women believed in the war effort for romanticized reasons, were less likely to desert or to not enlist at all. After the war was over, the pressing need to maintain that support base fell off, and so did the feminized literature.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Mary Ann makes a great point here.  I think the emphasis on women&amp;#039;s literature during the war was in part because men at the time were involved directly in the war.  I think that in order to retain a captive audience, publications had to market to their demographic, primarily women with men away in war.  I think the romanticized stories gave women something to relate on, especially those with husbands or sons away in war.  I believe it would have instilled a sense of comforting, almost, to know that I was not the only woman at the time facing the same emotions. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I really liked the Tony Horwitz quote that Fahs included (and not just because he might be one of my favorite authors). She said that in the late nineteenth century Americans &amp;quot;reclaimed a past of their own creation.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s so important for us to remember that collective memory is constantly changing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Perceptions of the Civil War changed with the changing attitudes about war and women of the time. It makes some sense that, postwar, women&amp;#039;s stories might be pushed to the side in favor of more masculine stories about the front. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Returning veterans were a very visible part of post-war life; women&amp;#039;s suffering, while obviously still with them, was no longer front and center.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; So, perceptions shifted, and they continued to change with the country, eventually colliding with the force-to-be-reckoned-with that was Gone with the Wind. I think it&amp;#039;s safe to say that many Americans hold certain ideas about the Civil War based on that novel alone, as well as ideas from all of the other Civil War books and movies produced over the past few decades. Not all of these memories are accurate, maybe most are not, but they represent something very real to the society that holds them as well as an interesting challenge to historians fighting to keep a semblance of reality, as experienced by women and men, both Northern and Southern, in the conversation. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed finally reading something about how women&amp;#039;s work and contributions were acknowledged and became part of a major event in US history. The essay said frequently that women&amp;#039;s role in the war effort was vital and influential. The literature at the time included feminized literature that &amp;quot;involved a distinctive, sentimentalized patriotism.&amp;quot; A good bit of the literature also centered on the woman&amp;#039;s responsibility to &amp;quot;sacrifice their men for their country.&amp;quot; The stories and articles seemed to focus on either persuading women to act patriotic to support their country or describe the emotions, struggles, and experiences of women or the &amp;quot;woman&amp;#039;s war.&amp;quot; It was sad to see that once the men came back from war the focus shifted more towards the masculinized war. Maybe it was to showcase the men for their bravery and patriotism for their country.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Before reading this, I had never thought about how much late 19th century Civil War literature focuses on Southern women, and not Northern women.  Of course, this is probably mainly due to the fact that I had no idea just how important of a role Northern Women had played during the War.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I can understand why their role was overshadowed after the war.  After all, the war came to be redefined by the war stories of men and honoring great officers and soldiers.  As for literature on Southern Women, I think it was appealing because it was greatly idealized, versus the more realistic literature from the North.  However, I think that it is amazing that Historians have also been fooled in to this misconception in their analysis of the both the Civil War and the literature of the time. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; We are not living in the 19th century, so we should have an objective point of view, right?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with CBrau I myself was very suprised at the lack of literature we typically see for Northern women throughout the Civil War. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I have only paid attention to literature from Southern women, due to the amount of fighting in the South and how their lives were completely destroyed, but women&amp;#039;s lives in the North were strongly affected as well. The literature and quotes from Northern mothers hit home to me as I have watched my mom proudly tell family members and friends that her son will serve the United States.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; As stated by New York Times, a mother after shopping with her son for his military equipment said, &amp;quot; This, my son, is all that I can do. I have given you up to serve your country, and may God go with you! It is all a mother can do.&amp;quot; I know this was stated by a Northern woman but I wondered if mothers felt this way all over the country and this unified them in their efforts to support not only the &amp;quot;woman&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; war but the Civil War as well? ie. through sending supplies, flying flags in faces of opposing generals, etc. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it super interesting how quickly the important contributions of women were forgotten. During the actual war it was fine for the media to have such a high percentage of feminized literature because the contributions that women were making were right there in front of them and not easily ignored. This might have also been because women probably dominated the audience, since they were the ones at home and able to get a magazine or paper. It seems that as the years passed after the end of the war, the emotions of the war were forgotten and men wanted to read about their battles and their leaders as opposed to the private and emotional battles that women fought, even if they were just as difficult and important. Fahs talks about how idealized southern white women&amp;#039;s literature was more popular, and this was probably because people did not want to face the reality of what really happened in the war. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article very interesting, seeing as how I wasn&amp;#039;t aware of how literature about the Civil War evolved.  As someone else mentioned, it does make sense that during the war much of the literature produced was on and aimed at women, a main reason probably due to the fact that men were just not a viable market - they were off fighting.  After the war, women, as often happens, are pushed to the back burner to focus on the &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; wartime victims - those in battle. This essay reemphasizes the idea that wartime memories change with the time period. Each study into a past war is dictated by what that generation is going through. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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The changing narratives following the war was not something that I was aware of.  The literature during and just following the war focused a great deal on women&amp;#039;s issues, yet changed in the 1880&amp;#039;s and 1890&amp;#039;s to a more masculinized story.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I wonder why the Southern women&amp;#039;s narrative has remained as the most compelling story of the Civil War to this day&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.-efritz&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The author posits that women&amp;#039;s suffering was equal to or greater than that of men fighting in the war.  Although women suffered great emotional trauma with the loss of their spouses or children, I don&amp;#039;t think that you can compare this emotional suffering to what the men were exposed to in battle.  They all suffered in their individual way, but the emotional and physical toll the men faced daily cannot be compared to that of women&amp;#039;s suffering back home.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;-efritz&lt;br /&gt;
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While reading I found it interesting that women’s literature disappeared and “a newly masculinized literary marketplace” took place AFTER the Civil War. The literature in stories, essays, novels, poems, songs, newspapers, and magazines switched from primarily focused on the personalities, suffering, and trials of women to focus on the “real” or “actual” experience of the people during the War; that which men had during the battles, who the people where, (specifically generals), and the deaths /problems during the war. In addition to this we must remember who the media of the period are appealing to; the women during the Civil War were the only ones left at home to receive and read these magazines, so they would appeal to them first and foremost and then to the men once they came back from war. When the men came back from war, they came back into their dominating role of society. In response to this fact, the media began to print articles about what they thought would be appealing to the men that came home, “The Century magazine, begun in 1881, published its famous battles and Leaders of the Civil War series from November 1884 until November 1887.” These were stories of their battles and the trials they, the men, had faced. I don’t think that when the men came home they wanted to hear about how much the women in their lives had suffered, but what they had suffered to bring freedom to their country and the women in it; the feel heroic and that they had survived. &lt;br /&gt;
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I also found the argument between the portrait of women encouraging the men to enlist and the effect of suffering because of sacrificing their men. Samuel Osgood explains his figure of women as “the good mother seated at the window from which floats the household flag, and watching intently the passing regiment and waving her handkerchief to some friend of kinsman…the nation seems to live in the person of this queen.” These women, especially mothers, appropriate roles are to sacrifice their sons and husbands for the good of the nation and, in this depiction, revel in their position in the military. “The patriotic mother and her daughter became a way of imagining personal obligation to the state.” In contrast, the picture of women suffering for their men is a truer reality than that of being happy during the war. Louise Chandler Moulton’s 1863 “One of Many” wrote “Is it not true that every bullet shoots double, and the shot which flies farthest makes the sorest wound?” In this sense a women is “wounded for far longer and far worse that the pain that the solider felt as he died and left her. I feel that Fanny Fern summed it up best in writing that she “who is giving her husband to her country, has given everything.” ---Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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== Elsa Barkley Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom: Reconstructing Southern Black Women’s Political History, 1865-1880” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I beleive this is the most important question asked in this essay:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; After the war, should the enfranchisement of black women, or of all women take place?  This question is central to many of the political struggles in the late 19th century.  Black women almost seperated themselves into a community to bond, which made overall suffrage more difficult.&lt;br /&gt;
-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Going along with the previous point I&amp;#039;m not sure if the black female community had worked less towards creating a homogenous community that they would have had an easier time gaining suffrage. It seemed however that it was a necessity for these womens to create these communities in order to survive the difficulties of post slavery life in the Reconstruction Era.---Emma&lt;br /&gt;
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Going with the question of the enfranchisement of women... I really was encouraged by the fact that although the book explicitly states that Black men also felt that women were inferior to men in their social positions it was later stated that &amp;quot;serious discussion&amp;quot; regarding the suffrage of women was reliant upon the presence of black delegates in support of the woman&amp;#039;s suffrage movement. -SSellers&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought chapter 10 brought up a good question, which was how the transition from slavery to freedom was expected to function&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. If I remember correctly the majority of white Americans still viewed African Americans as inferior and it was mainly a small percentage of Northern Radicals that were trying to achieve equality for them in their meaning of freedom. As history shows it would still take a long time for freedom to mean anything for freed slaves. So my question is after the Civil War ended what kind of life could African Americans find without having any rights? ---David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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I like David Fitch&amp;#039;s point, but also think that it was because African Americans had no real rights that the battle for suffrage was so important.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;African American women saw the vote as a collective possession between men and women based on the belief within the African American community of collective responsibility&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Republican black males supported this belief. Maybe I’m being too cynical, but the impression I got was that it wasn’t necessarily because they believed in any kind of “autonomy as one” thing but because the women could help keep black men from voting as Democrats, which helped keep the Republicans in power. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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-Taylor, would the men have voted Democratic if their wives hadn&amp;#039;t insisted on Republican? I&amp;#039;m not sure, but I feel like many would have continued to vote Republican because of the party&amp;#039;s strong ties to Lincoln. Perhaps the issue would have been whether they voted at all if their wives had not forced them to get to the polls. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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The idea of collective responsibility is very interesting.  That it takes a whole family sometimes including fictive kin to survive.  The idea that when one makes a decision it effects the whole family especially including political decisions.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Did the importance of community and family stem from the fact that they had been divided in slavery?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it really striking that African American women worked so hard to ensure that the men in their lives voted, and voted Republican. And that it was a family vote, not a man&amp;#039;s vote on behalf of his family says a lot about the system of community many seemed to operate under. In answer to Mhimes, I would say that yes, a lot of the importance of family probably stemmed from generations of families being torn apart. Now that these individuals could house their families under one roof a strong desire to do everything they could to protect that family meant weighing every decision, including of course the political ones, carefully. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;And slaves, out of necessity,  had long built families out of unrelated community members so I imagine that the same sense of self-preservation felt for blood relatives carried over for the community as a whole.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The women did not want to see hard won freedom taken away by a lack of awareness and participation. And, as the author points out, some of the women&amp;#039;s involvement was even to ensure the physical safety of the voting men. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought it was interesting when the essay talked about how even though black men had finally gained rights to vote they still were not completely supportive of women having the right to vote. Maybe it is a stupid assumption but I would think that since they knew how it felt to have less rights than others they would show more sympathy towards women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; They didn&amp;#039;t think it was as absurd as white men did but why wouldn&amp;#039;t they fight for them harder, especially if that meant all African American people would finally have their rights and freedoms?  Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I think, perhaps, one reason that black men did not totally support a woman&amp;#039;s right to vote is that they were as submerged in the time period as their white contemporaries. They saw how the white men saw &amp;quot;masculinity&amp;quot; and the gender roles that men and women had in the white society. Black men were most importantl men and they were recognized (finally and rightfully so) as men and not property which gave them the rights of men (obviously some white areas objected more to this in action and in law than others) and with that came the dominance and head of household ideaology that white men held onto. Also since this freedom was new, and the black men had been given the right to vote, it is possible that they feared that if they took to protesting for the right for women to vote all the progress they had just experienced may be taken away more than what it was in some places. -jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised to see African American women&amp;#039;s roles in voting before women&amp;#039;s suffrage. Before college, we are taught that women were not able to vote, therefore they did not. However, Brown clearly contradicts this in her article. African American women in Richmond were publicly participating in politics, even voting at the community/local level, while others took it upon themselves to view their husband&amp;#039;s right to vote as a collective, rather than individual, vote. These women were going to vote, whether or not they were legally able to do so. And yet, historians tend to look at this part of history as black and white; African American women were either able to physically vote in the polling booths, or they were not. Clearly, we need to look at the entire issue differently to understand the importance of African American women in 19th century politics. -- CBrau &lt;br /&gt;
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In response to CBrau, not only were Black women voting before they were allowed to, white women were also doing that as well. In some nothern cities, women went to the polls and were allowed to vote (while others ended up getting arrested), all before the strict enforcement of not allowing females to vote. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I strongly agree with Amy&amp;#039;s point, black men had suffered right alongside women the harsh reality of being a lower citizen in society and yet once they were allowed to vote they did not think it was the right place for a woman. Only men could be responsible for serious and political matters. Is this a reason why black women formed such close knit bonds with others? Were women more capable of supporting one another even if it only involved giving someone a roof over their head? I would have thought black men would of understood women&amp;#039;s struggles but that appeared to be a difficult concept once men were able to make a mark. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Megan W.&amp;#039;s point, but also find it interesting that some black women thought that their husband&amp;#039;s vote was their vote as well. This puts an interesting spin on a typically male dominated issue. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I also think its really interesting that black women worked hard for their right to vote right after the war ended and also worked behind the scenes. Brown talks about how black women created their own organized groups such as the Rising Daughters of Liberty that played important roles in the political campaigns at the time. They also sent women from their communities to speak on their behalf at political meetings. These women were also willing to literally fight for their rights. Brown says that they took up weapons during political meetings so that their preferred delegates would not be intimidated. I think all of this shows that black women were among the first suffragettes and should be recognized as such. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the idea of collective responsibility interesting, also.  I agree with the point raised by Amy about black men and their role in supporting or not supporting black women&amp;#039;s rights to vote.  I found it interesting how the article tied in black women&amp;#039;s impact on their husbands, especially in regards to voting Republican or Democrat.  Would this had been the case if men had originally fully supported black women&amp;#039;s right to vote, or was it because of their resistance that women tried to establish a sense of control over their husbands voting decisions?  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked how such emphasis was placed on the community of newly freed slaves. They were all in the same boat together and recognized this fact. They banded together to achieve their common goals and knew that they would not be able to make it into mainstream American culture if they only functioned in respect to themselves. The community was such an important supporting factor for the freedmen that it should not be ignored by the history texts.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Many comments reflect the surprise that some black men were opposed to their female counterparts; however, i do not find it all that shocking. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;After the whole race spending their entire lives (and all the generations before) being so enslaved and emasculated, I can see some wanting to have some sort of dominance in their lives&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Christine makes an interesting point about the possibility that black men would embrace the idea of being dominant over something in their lives. It seems that since Slavery was so emasculating and degrading that the opportunity to be able to assert their role as a male figurehead over women would be difficult to resist. I think often we assume that because as a community they endured such hardships together they would band together in the struggle for equality. It reminds me of how in the womens suffrage movement often white and black women could not agree to work together for a common goal.---Emma&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_2_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 2 Questions/Comments</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_2_Questions/Comments"/>
				<updated>2010-01-21T03:47:43Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Elsa Barkley Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom: Reconstructing Southern Black Women’s Political History, 1865-1880” */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Comments/questions comparing the articles ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Alice Fahs, “The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of War, 1861-1900” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Based on a paper I wrote on the United States Sanitary Commission last semester, this was a very interesting essay to read.  Fahs mentions that the war still follows the &amp;quot;masculanized culture&amp;quot; that was in place at the time and through my research I discovered the same things.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Much of the standard literature was centered around the fighting and the man&amp;#039;s roles on the battlefield, yet women&amp;#039;s roles on and off the battlefield cannot be forgotten.  It is interesting how literature giving credit to women must be labeled as &amp;quot;feminist&amp;quot; literature, when in reality, they should be given the same treatment as men&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. -- Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found it very interesting how she discusses the different type of surrering that women endured.  Men endured the horrors of war and their suffering was very physical and visual.  Women, however, also suffered but they experienced strictly emotional suffering.  They were cut deeply by these emotional wounds of not knowing weather their loved-ones were safe on the battlefield and some argued that these wounds cut deeper than those of men.  Where men simply died on the battlefield, women had to endure the death of a loved one, while still remaining strong, and now being forced to provide for themselves. -- Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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It&amp;#039;s interesting how Civil War literature shifted from a focus on the tribulations of northern women to those of southern women.  And &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;despite a strong emphasis on realistic literature, southern women and antebellum plantation life was highly romanticized.  This probably came in part from a desire to both remember a time when the nation was united (which can also be seen in the popularity of stories centered around the Revolution)and to try to create a new identity centered around northern and southern reconciliation and &amp;quot;white&amp;quot; ideals.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; - Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I can&amp;#039;t help but think about &amp;quot;Gone With the Wind&amp;quot; whenever they mentioned southern woman&amp;#039;s literature after the war (which they eventually did mention in the reading)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
I know that the depiction found within that novel is unrealistic, but the romanticizing of the civil war and the southern woman&amp;#039;s role in it IS interesting to read and find relations to even in today&amp;#039;s non-antebellum southern world..... -Ssellers&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think it is important to keep in mind that literature is largely written for an audience, and yet, this literature is what shapes the public memory of an event&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. The dominant forms of fiction at the outset of the war were women’s domestic novels. This impacts what type of literature was written during the war. It should come as no surprise that during the war, “the literary marketplace supported an outpouring of popular literature portraying women’s domestic participation in the war.” This domestic participation includes working, sacrifice, and loss, some even argue that the women sacrificed more than the men who were fighting. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;However, there was a shift in literature with the rise of Civil War veterans organizations. This led to a shift in who were the bearers of the war’s memory from women to veterans.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It is amazing how the Civil War has become, “a white male conflict, rather than a cataclysmic event that rent and remade the fabric of life for all Americans.” – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Throughout the reading on the Feminized Civil War, I kept asking myself where the women had gone; it was as if their memory of the Civil War had disappeared entirely. I was pleased when I came across Mary Livermore who, in 1887, spoke out against where the literature about the civil war was going. She argued that the story of Northern women was missing.  Then, in 1889 Edward Bellamy, stated that, “many pictures of battles have been painted, but no true one yet, for the pictures contain only men. The women are unaccountably left out.” Finally, there was Elizabeth Stuart Phelps who actually “undermined stereotypes of veterans” and “challenged the veteran dominated culture of remembrance itself.” I was just happy to see that women were not entirely forgotten in the decades following the Civil War. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am curious as to how the majority of women felt when their impacts on the war became largely overlooked, especially after all of the pain and loss that they had experienced.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It seems as time moved on after the Civil War it increasingly became to be defined as a &amp;quot;Man&amp;#039;s War&amp;quot;, specifically a &amp;quot;White Man&amp;#039;s War&amp;quot;.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; All of the domestic issues women faced, such as caring for children, the home, and earning a living, faded with the passage of time. It appears that a romanticized portrait of the war was painted in which much of the heart-ache and problems women faced on an everyday basis were pushed to the wayside in favor of remembering the great battles and generals of the day. This is yet another example of how women were forgotten in the shadow of their men. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Anna Holman&amp;#039;s approach that the Civil War had largely (and unfortunately) came to be defined as a &amp;quot;Man&amp;#039;s War.&amp;quot; I also found it interesting that they begin to recognize the importance of the woman in everyday life, thought the focus was only on the mother initially. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;On page 133, Fahs points out that, &amp;quot;women especially mothers, personalized the nation, that they link the private and public realms.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Not only does Fahs point out that women were in a sense the backbone of the nation, but they were also able to tie together the separate spheres. --MDvorak &lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with both Anna and MDvorak here.  I found it interesting how the reading referred to the war as a &amp;quot;Man&amp;#039;s War&amp;quot;.  Fahs focused a lot of attention on the emotional side of women during the war, but the connection of their emotions to the men in their lives and the country, I think, is most important.  I believe it showed that the suffering aspect a of war produced a personal connection to the war for women, especially when they were not directly involved (on the battlefield, for instance). Also, I found the shift away from women after the war in publications was extremely important in understanding how people at this time, particularly men, viewed the war.     -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I also agree with the above three statements. I find it interesting that women were seen as the emotional backbone of the nation which would seem to imply that they were seen as an important aspect of the war-if the sons were not properly &amp;quot;sent off&amp;quot; or supported by the mother who they looked to for emotional strength then it would be hard to determine how they would have been able to survive the horrors of war even remotely emotionally intact. However, it seems as if this important contribution was greatly overshadowed by the carnage of war. It makes everyday strength and courage appear as a lesser virtue than uncommon courage in the face of sudden and inescapable danger. WHere did these men learn that strength? From the readings it would be the mother who taught this trait and yet the mother gets virtually no credit. -jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
I also completely agree with Erin Sanderson&amp;#039;s statement in which she discusses how after men returned from the war, the literature market increasingly became dominated by men&amp;#039;s war stories. The interests of women were again pushed away for those of men. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised to find out that the Civil War was so feminized during the war and directly following it. The war has definitely become masculine in the public memory, and it makes me want to take a look at how the public images of other wars have changed. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Why was there a focus on the Northern women’s war in Civil War literature in the first place? Was it because they were the only ones around that had the opportunity to read it? Many Northern men would have been fighting, and in the South, both men and women would have had larger concerns than publishing and reading literature. How come when the war once again entered popular memory in the 1880s, it became focused on the masculine aspects of the war? The article mentions a shift away from Victorian feminine literature towards realist literature. Was there some sort of demographic change in readership?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It seems as though the media played a larger role during and after the civil war.  From the material read, it seemed to have expressed sadness, pride, and Patriotism of people’s experiences of the War.  Women&amp;#039;s writing was more prominent because the men were away in war.  But when the men came home their stories needed to be told.  I think this symbolizes men returning to the public sphere.  I think the type of stories told says something about men and women&amp;#039;s roles.  In these stories about women you see the emotional side and in men&amp;#039;s stories they were more about glory and valor. The change from fiction to more non-fiction stories is interesting.  Could this have been because people had just dealt with real emotions, those including pain and sorrow, were ready for something real?  Was it something they could better relate to?  --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I too was initially a little surprised to find that stories about women dominated much of the media at the time, but it really makes sense considering women were the ones remaining home and actually buying and reading the publications of the day. These women understandably wanted stories that they could relate to and that emphasized the importance of their own contributions to the war effort. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It also may have been a not so subtle nudge on behalf of the powers-that-be to encourage women, for purely practical reasons, to continue to support the men at war. After all, soldiers who had the support of their families, even if the women believed in the war effort for romanticized reasons, were less likely to desert or to not enlist at all. After the war was over, the pressing need to maintain that support base fell off, and so did the feminized literature.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Mary Ann makes a great point here.  I think the emphasis on women&amp;#039;s literature during the war was in part because men at the time were involved directly in the war.  I think that in order to retain a captive audience, publications had to market to their demographic, primarily women with men away in war.  I think the romanticized stories gave women something to relate on, especially those with husbands or sons away in war.  I believe it would have instilled a sense of comforting, almost, to know that I was not the only woman at the time facing the same emotions. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I really liked the Tony Horwitz quote that Fahs included (and not just because he might be one of my favorite authors). She said that in the late nineteenth century Americans &amp;quot;reclaimed a past of their own creation.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s so important for us to remember that collective memory is constantly changing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Perceptions of the Civil War changed with the changing attitudes about war and women of the time. It makes some sense that, postwar, women&amp;#039;s stories might be pushed to the side in favor of more masculine stories about the front. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Returning veterans were a very visible part of post-war life; women&amp;#039;s suffering, while obviously still with them, was no longer front and center.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; So, perceptions shifted, and they continued to change with the country, eventually colliding with the force-to-be-reckoned-with that was Gone with the Wind. I think it&amp;#039;s safe to say that many Americans hold certain ideas about the Civil War based on that novel alone, as well as ideas from all of the other Civil War books and movies produced over the past few decades. Not all of these memories are accurate, maybe most are not, but they represent something very real to the society that holds them as well as an interesting challenge to historians fighting to keep a semblance of reality, as experienced by women and men, both Northern and Southern, in the conversation. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed finally reading something about how women&amp;#039;s work and contributions were acknowledged and became part of a major event in US history. The essay said frequently that women&amp;#039;s role in the war effort was vital and influential. The literature at the time included feminized literature that &amp;quot;involved a distinctive, sentimentalized patriotism.&amp;quot; A good bit of the literature also centered on the woman&amp;#039;s responsibility to &amp;quot;sacrifice their men for their country.&amp;quot; The stories and articles seemed to focus on either persuading women to act patriotic to support their country or describe the emotions, struggles, and experiences of women or the &amp;quot;woman&amp;#039;s war.&amp;quot; It was sad to see that once the men came back from war the focus shifted more towards the masculinized war. Maybe it was to showcase the men for their bravery and patriotism for their country.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Before reading this, I had never thought about how much late 19th century Civil War literature focuses on Southern women, and not Northern women.  Of course, this is probably mainly due to the fact that I had no idea just how important of a role Northern Women had played during the War.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I can understand why their role was overshadowed after the war.  After all, the war came to be redefined by the war stories of men and honoring great officers and soldiers.  As for literature on Southern Women, I think it was appealing because it was greatly idealized, versus the more realistic literature from the North.  However, I think that it is amazing that Historians have also been fooled in to this misconception in their analysis of the both the Civil War and the literature of the time. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; We are not living in the 19th century, so we should have an objective point of view, right?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with CBrau I myself was very suprised at the lack of literature we typically see for Northern women throughout the Civil War. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I have only paid attention to literature from Southern women, due to the amount of fighting in the South and how their lives were completely destroyed, but women&amp;#039;s lives in the North were strongly affected as well. The literature and quotes from Northern mothers hit home to me as I have watched my mom proudly tell family members and friends that her son will serve the United States.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; As stated by New York Times, a mother after shopping with her son for his military equipment said, &amp;quot; This, my son, is all that I can do. I have given you up to serve your country, and may God go with you! It is all a mother can do.&amp;quot; I know this was stated by a Northern woman but I wondered if mothers felt this way all over the country and this unified them in their efforts to support not only the &amp;quot;woman&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; war but the Civil War as well? ie. through sending supplies, flying flags in faces of opposing generals, etc. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it super interesting how quickly the important contributions of women were forgotten. During the actual war it was fine for the media to have such a high percentage of feminized literature because the contributions that women were making were right there in front of them and not easily ignored. This might have also been because women probably dominated the audience, since they were the ones at home and able to get a magazine or paper. It seems that as the years passed after the end of the war, the emotions of the war were forgotten and men wanted to read about their battles and their leaders as opposed to the private and emotional battles that women fought, even if they were just as difficult and important. Fahs talks about how idealized southern white women&amp;#039;s literature was more popular, and this was probably because people did not want to face the reality of what really happened in the war. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article very interesting, seeing as how I wasn&amp;#039;t aware of how literature about the Civil War evolved.  As someone else mentioned, it does make sense that during the war much of the literature produced was on and aimed at women, a main reason probably due to the fact that men were just not a viable market - they were off fighting.  After the war, women, as often happens, are pushed to the back burner to focus on the &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; wartime victims - those in battle. This essay reemphasizes the idea that wartime memories change with the time period. Each study into a past war is dictated by what that generation is going through. - Christine L&lt;br /&gt;
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The changing narratives following the war was not something that I was aware of.  The literature during and just following the war focused a great deal on women&amp;#039;s issues, yet changed in the 1880&amp;#039;s and 1890&amp;#039;s to a more masculinized story.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I wonder why the Southern women&amp;#039;s narrative has remained as the most compelling story of the Civil War to this day&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.-efritz&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The author posits that women&amp;#039;s suffering was equal to or greater than that of men fighting in the war.  Although women suffered great emotional trauma with the loss of their spouses or children, I don&amp;#039;t think that you can compare this emotional suffering to what the men were exposed to in battle.  They all suffered in their individual way, but the emotional and physical toll the men faced daily cannot be compared to that of women&amp;#039;s suffering back home.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;-efritz&lt;br /&gt;
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While reading I found it interesting that women’s literature disappeared and “a newly masculinized literary marketplace” took place AFTER the Civil War. The literature in stories, essays, novels, poems, songs, newspapers, and magazines switched from primarily focused on the personalities, suffering, and trials of women to focus on the “real” or “actual” experience of the people during the War; that which men had during the battles, who the people where, (specifically generals), and the deaths /problems during the war. In addition to this we must remember who the media of the period are appealing to; the women during the Civil War were the only ones left at home to receive and read these magazines, so they would appeal to them first and foremost and then to the men once they came back from war. When the men came back from war, they came back into their dominating role of society. In response to this fact, the media began to print articles about what they thought would be appealing to the men that came home, “The Century magazine, begun in 1881, published its famous battles and Leaders of the Civil War series from November 1884 until November 1887.” These were stories of their battles and the trials they, the men, had faced. I don’t think that when the men came home they wanted to hear about how much the women in their lives had suffered, but what they had suffered to bring freedom to their country and the women in it; the feel heroic and that they had survived. &lt;br /&gt;
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I also found the argument between the portrait of women encouraging the men to enlist and the effect of suffering because of sacrificing their men. Samuel Osgood explains his figure of women as “the good mother seated at the window from which floats the household flag, and watching intently the passing regiment and waving her handkerchief to some friend of kinsman…the nation seems to live in the person of this queen.” These women, especially mothers, appropriate roles are to sacrifice their sons and husbands for the good of the nation and, in this depiction, revel in their position in the military. “The patriotic mother and her daughter became a way of imagining personal obligation to the state.” In contrast, the picture of women suffering for their men is a truer reality than that of being happy during the war. Louise Chandler Moulton’s 1863 “One of Many” wrote “Is it not true that every bullet shoots double, and the shot which flies farthest makes the sorest wound?” In this sense a women is “wounded for far longer and far worse that the pain that the solider felt as he died and left her. I feel that Fanny Fern summed it up best in writing that she “who is giving her husband to her country, has given everything.” ---Morgan&lt;br /&gt;
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== Elsa Barkley Brown, “To Catch the Vision of Freedom: Reconstructing Southern Black Women’s Political History, 1865-1880” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I beleive this is the most important question asked in this essay:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; After the war, should the enfranchisement of black women, or of all women take place?  This question is central to many of the political struggles in the late 19th century.  Black women almost seperated themselves into a community to bond, which made overall suffrage more difficult.&lt;br /&gt;
-Afrisk&lt;br /&gt;
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Going with the question of the enfranchisement of women... I really was encouraged by the fact that although the book explicitly states that Black men also felt that women were inferior to men in their social positions it was later stated that &amp;quot;serious discussion&amp;quot; regarding the suffrage of women was reliant upon the presence of black delegates in support of the woman&amp;#039;s suffrage movement. -SSellers&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought chapter 10 brought up a good question, which was how the transition from slavery to freedom was expected to function&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. If I remember correctly the majority of white Americans still viewed African Americans as inferior and it was mainly a small percentage of Northern Radicals that were trying to achieve equality for them in their meaning of freedom. As history shows it would still take a long time for freedom to mean anything for freed slaves. So my question is after the Civil War ended what kind of life could African Americans find without having any rights? ---David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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I like David Fitch&amp;#039;s point, but also think that it was because African Americans had no real rights that the battle for suffrage was so important.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;African American women saw the vote as a collective possession between men and women based on the belief within the African American community of collective responsibility&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Republican black males supported this belief. Maybe I’m being too cynical, but the impression I got was that it wasn’t necessarily because they believed in any kind of “autonomy as one” thing but because the women could help keep black men from voting as Democrats, which helped keep the Republicans in power. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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-Taylor, would the men have voted Democratic if their wives hadn&amp;#039;t insisted on Republican? I&amp;#039;m not sure, but I feel like many would have continued to vote Republican because of the party&amp;#039;s strong ties to Lincoln. Perhaps the issue would have been whether they voted at all if their wives had not forced them to get to the polls. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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The idea of collective responsibility is very interesting.  That it takes a whole family sometimes including fictive kin to survive.  The idea that when one makes a decision it effects the whole family especially including political decisions.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Did the importance of community and family stem from the fact that they had been divided in slavery?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   --Mhimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it really striking that African American women worked so hard to ensure that the men in their lives voted, and voted Republican. And that it was a family vote, not a man&amp;#039;s vote on behalf of his family says a lot about the system of community many seemed to operate under. In answer to Mhimes, I would say that yes, a lot of the importance of family probably stemmed from generations of families being torn apart. Now that these individuals could house their families under one roof a strong desire to do everything they could to protect that family meant weighing every decision, including of course the political ones, carefully. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;And slaves, out of necessity,  had long built families out of unrelated community members so I imagine that the same sense of self-preservation felt for blood relatives carried over for the community as a whole.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The women did not want to see hard won freedom taken away by a lack of awareness and participation. And, as the author points out, some of the women&amp;#039;s involvement was even to ensure the physical safety of the voting men. -Mary Ann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought it was interesting when the essay talked about how even though black men had finally gained rights to vote they still were not completely supportive of women having the right to vote. Maybe it is a stupid assumption but I would think that since they knew how it felt to have less rights than others they would show more sympathy towards women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; They didn&amp;#039;t think it was as absurd as white men did but why wouldn&amp;#039;t they fight for them harder, especially if that meant all African American people would finally have their rights and freedoms?  Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I think, perhaps, one reason that black men did not totally support a woman&amp;#039;s right to vote is that they were as submerged in the time period as their white contemporaries. They saw how the white men saw &amp;quot;masculinity&amp;quot; and the gender roles that men and women had in the white society. Black men were most importantl men and they were recognized (finally and rightfully so) as men and not property which gave them the rights of men (obviously some white areas objected more to this in action and in law than others) and with that came the dominance and head of household ideaology that white men held onto. Also since this freedom was new, and the black men had been given the right to vote, it is possible that they feared that if they took to protesting for the right for women to vote all the progress they had just experienced may be taken away more than what it was in some places. -jmarshal&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised to see African American women&amp;#039;s roles in voting before women&amp;#039;s suffrage. Before college, we are taught that women were not able to vote, therefore they did not. However, Brown clearly contradicts this in her article. African American women in Richmond were publicly participating in politics, even voting at the community/local level, while others took it upon themselves to view their husband&amp;#039;s right to vote as a collective, rather than individual, vote. These women were going to vote, whether or not they were legally able to do so. And yet, historians tend to look at this part of history as black and white; African American women were either able to physically vote in the polling booths, or they were not. Clearly, we need to look at the entire issue differently to understand the importance of African American women in 19th century politics. -- CBrau &lt;br /&gt;
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In response to CBrau, not only were Black women voting before they were allowed to, white women were also doing that as well. In some nothern cities, women went to the polls and were allowed to vote (while others ended up getting arrested), all before the strict enforcement of not allowing females to vote. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I strongly agree with Amy&amp;#039;s point, black men had suffered right alongside women the harsh reality of being a lower citizen in society and yet once they were allowed to vote they did not think it was the right place for a woman. Only men could be responsible for serious and political matters. Is this a reason why black women formed such close knit bonds with others? Were women more capable of supporting one another even if it only involved giving someone a roof over their head? I would have thought black men would of understood women&amp;#039;s struggles but that appeared to be a difficult concept once men were able to make a mark. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Megan W.&amp;#039;s point, but also find it interesting that some black women thought that their husband&amp;#039;s vote was their vote as well. This puts an interesting spin on a typically male dominated issue. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I also think its really interesting that black women worked hard for their right to vote right after the war ended and also worked behind the scenes. Brown talks about how black women created their own organized groups such as the Rising Daughters of Liberty that played important roles in the political campaigns at the time. They also sent women from their communities to speak on their behalf at political meetings. These women were also willing to literally fight for their rights. Brown says that they took up weapons during political meetings so that their preferred delegates would not be intimidated. I think all of this shows that black women were among the first suffragettes and should be recognized as such. -- Angie&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the idea of collective responsibility interesting, also.  I agree with the point raised by Amy about black men and their role in supporting or not supporting black women&amp;#039;s rights to vote.  I found it interesting how the article tied in black women&amp;#039;s impact on their husbands, especially in regards to voting Republican or Democrat.  Would this had been the case if men had originally fully supported black women&amp;#039;s right to vote, or was it because of their resistance that women tried to establish a sense of control over their husbands voting decisions?  -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked how such emphasis was placed on the community of newly freed slaves. They were all in the same boat together and recognized this fact. They banded together to achieve their common goals and knew that they would not be able to make it into mainstream American culture if they only functioned in respect to themselves. The community was such an important supporting factor for the freedmen that it should not be ignored by the history texts.--Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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Many comments reflect the surprise that some black men were opposed to their female counterparts; however, i do not find it all that shocking. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;After the whole race spending their entire lives (and all the generations before) being so enslaved and emasculated, I can see some wanting to have some sort of dominance in their lives&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. - christine l&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Christine makes an interesting point about the possibility that black men would embrace the idea of being dominant over something in their lives. It seems that since Slavery was so emasculating and degrading that the opportunity to be able to assert their role as a male figurehead over women would be difficult to resist. I think often we assume that because as a community they endured such hardships together they would band together in the struggle for equality. It reminds me of how in the womens suffrage movement often white and black women could not agree to work together for a common goal.---Emma&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

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		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=328_2010--Week_1_Questions/Comments</id>
		<title>328 2010--Week 1 Questions/Comments</title>
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				<updated>2010-01-14T04:35:27Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: &lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;So apparently I&amp;#039;m the first to comment, yay. In &amp;quot;Defining &amp;quot;American Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot; I really liked the concept on page 6 that &amp;quot;if gender is created rather than assumed... then so too is race, ethinicity, health, age, work, social status, sexuality, and so on.&amp;quot; I found it interesting to think about Women&amp;#039;s history in that sense especially when correlated with the later readings on black women in the United States and their association with both (what is considered to be) an &amp;quot;inferior&amp;quot; race AND gender and how that affects them. --SSellers&lt;br /&gt;
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Kind of going along with the first statement, it was interesting to see that some historians balk at including race, class, etc., in women&amp;#039;s history because they seem to feel that it will ultimately remove the gender aspect from the discipline in favor of a focus on race or another variable. Yet if you&amp;#039;re going to study women, don&amp;#039;t you have to study real women&amp;#039;s lives, as complex or as multifaceted as they may be? To claim that all women can be put into the same category risks losing the richness of understanding that comes with exploring the differences as well as the similarities among groups or individuals, as Leslie M. Alexander points out. And it would also turn many people away from studying the subject, just as women can feel excluded by traditional, male-focused history. -MMackey&lt;br /&gt;
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It also seems like a Catch-22 to be in this course now. Learning about Women&amp;#039;s history separate from &amp;quot;men&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; history empowers the women by allowing them to be a distinct categorization, but also segregates Women&amp;#039;s history and makes it seemingly inferior to Men&amp;#039;s history. I have no idea where to stand on the separation... --SSellers&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to SSellers, I think it is important to remember that up until recently, history has been dominated by men because men were the ones who were literate. Therefore, history came from the male&amp;#039;s perspective. I am not sure if that makes women&amp;#039;s history inferior, just harder because it takes deeper analysis to find where women fit into history and how they felt.  I mean, men and women share the same history. Their roles within it, however, were different and it takes a women&amp;#039;s studies course to discover where women fit into the world during any given time. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Also commenting on SSellers and in agreement with Erin, just because women&amp;#039;s history is a somewhat new classification of history, doesn&amp;#039;t mean its &amp;quot;inferior.&amp;quot; Studied, accepted history is in the eyes and pens of white, European men.  What we study and learn starting in kindergarten is what they (those white men) wanted us to know about their lives and times.  Studying women&amp;#039;s history, or any other classification of history (black, native american, chinese, etc.) isn&amp;#039;t segregating any one group.  You can&amp;#039;t learn about anything by looking at it strictly in isolation.  You must take these primary sources and examine them for hidden meanings, context, perspectives, goals, etc. In this course we are not simply learning what women did, we are learning what they did in comparison to what was going on in the rest of the country and population, and what was expected previously and currently of them. (I don&amp;#039;t know if being in the first half of this class has made me biased, but there ya go!!) - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that these are very interesting comments on the issue of inferiority between men&amp;#039;s and women&amp;#039;s history.  Is men&amp;#039;s history be superior because there is more written information, because certain historical men had larger political influence than most women did, or because of how history is taught today?  I know we can&amp;#039;t really understand women&amp;#039;s history without looking at men&amp;#039;s history, but couldn&amp;#039;t the same be said for men&amp;#039;s history? - J Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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The debate between &amp;quot;equality&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;difference&amp;quot; in terms of women in Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s article stood out to me as well. The groups in support of both singular approaches have valid points, but I would say that they are not mutually exclusive. The knee-jerk reaction is often that different equals inferior or bad, but I think its possible to acknowledge something as different without demeaning it. Maybe it ultimately comes down to the fact that every individual is different, so determining and highlighting some great difference women supposedly possess or some manly standard women should be aiming for seems silly in light of how varied women, and men, are. -MMackey&lt;br /&gt;
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Overall in this reading, I was interested in how each author defined women. “Definining ‘American Women’s History&amp;#039;” by Kate Haulman, shows how complex American Women’s History is just by looking at the separate words: “American” “Women’s” and “History.” Focusing on the “Women” aspect, Kate Haulman mainly looks at the word “women” in opposition to men and a lump category that all individuals who identify themselves as women fit into. Gisela Bock in “Challenging Dichotomies in Women’s History” looks at the word “women” in terms of the dichotomy of sex versus gender and how people identify themselves (“sex” being biological, “gender” being social). As I read Antonia Castañeda’s essay, “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History” the definition of “women” became even more complex in very important ways because she argues that you can’t look at women as one lump category, you have to reject the idea of a common sisterhood, because such a thing does not exist. Castañeda states, “Women’s gender experiences and definitions were as divers as the cultures from which they came”. Based off of these readings it is clear that no two scholars have the same definitions, so it is important to realize that categories and definitions are dynamic, changing with time and interpretation. -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin about how Kate Haulman showed the complexity of women&amp;#039;s history. It isn&amp;#039;t enough jut to focus on women&amp;#039;s history as a whole, and I think that is interesting. In any other facet of historical study, we would focus on events as a whole, such as wars. But with women in history, it is different. I never realized how large women&amp;#039;s history is, until I broke it down into its smaller categories. Each woman experienced different things, but there are so many factors that play into the different experiences, such as class, race, religion, age, and even time period they lived in. Who knew something so general like women&amp;#039;s history could turn out to be complex? -- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the changing dynamics of women&amp;#039;s history to be incredibly interesting. According to Kate Haulman, in the past only &amp;quot;notable women&amp;quot; were written about. Even being characterized as a &amp;quot;notable woman&amp;quot; was defined by male terms in a male dominated society. However, there was a great shift in the study of women from these notable women to the everyday woman. Even so, this study of the everyday woman was still dominated by male terms, as Gisela Bock notes. All of women&amp;#039;s activities were judged by the male standard, which was deemed valuable. The spheres that the study of women were divided into, suck as Public vs. Private, were still male dominated. It seems that males have dominated almost every aspect of women&amp;#039;s history. Males are the standard upon which women are judged, they decide which women are important enough to be studied, and they define all spheres of the women&amp;#039;s lives. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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I completely agree with Anna Holman&amp;#039;s comment above. It was fascinating to read about the evolution of women&amp;#039;s history and made me wonder how it will continue to evolve in the future. Hopefully as we move forward, women&amp;#039;s history will be able to be studied without male domination and we can define ourselves. -- Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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Adding onto Erin Sanderson&amp;#039;s statement, I found it interesting how Kate Haulman stated that gender was created and fluid. It is fascinating to understand how people identify with the term &amp;quot;woman&amp;quot;, and how it intersects the other aspects of their identity, such as their unique race and ethnicity. --Anna Holman&lt;br /&gt;
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As I was reading, I was intrigued by Kate Haulman&amp;#039;s statement about the definition of &amp;quot;American.&amp;quot; It did seem like the term would be uncomplicated, simply refering to residents of the United States. The fact that &amp;quot;American&amp;quot; could refer (maybe, should refer) to anyone in the Americas was something I had never considered before. --Kokeefe&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how Kate Haulman pointed out that women&amp;#039;s history started out focused on notable women, as if they suitably represented other women of their time.  Yet, these women were, and are, often notable because they either went against the norms of society to accomplish something great for women or society in general.  Obviously, that is not something most women do.  And then, fo course, one has to consider how much is being seen from a male&amp;#039;s point of view.  So, I definitely believe it is important to study all kinds of women, not just notable figures, in order to get a more realistic picture of women throughout history.  --  CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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In accumulating the readings, I found that they similarly shared underlying factors.  Those factors being race and ethnicity, gender, class, and locality.  What I thought was interesting was that even though race and gender do not change, but perspectives towards race and gender do change over time.  Naturally writings reflect changes in one’s perspective.  --MHimes  &lt;br /&gt;
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I found the same similarities of race, class, culture, community, and sexual orientation throughout the reading. All these factors seem to be the cornerstone for uncovering women&amp;#039;s history. I agree with MHimes that perspectives do change over time, as does history. After reading this first chapter I have realized that Women&amp;#039;s History is a completely different field of study told differently than other history subjects, both because we now live in a age where women have equality, and that scholars are coming to understand the history of women. ---David Fitch&lt;br /&gt;
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In Rethinking the Position of Black Women in American History, under the “gender first” policy, Alexander makes an valid point.  I thought it was interesting when she said that you cannot divorce Black Women from the community or you will not understand the Black Woman.  Black women had to hurdle racial inequality before they could focus on their own empowerment as a woman.  They did not have that same leisure as a white woman.  At the same time, you can’t explain women’s history without including black women.  Black women were an intricate part of white women’s lives as servants or field laborers.  Black Woman slaves relieved a lot of  White Women’s duties so they could focus on raising their children. --MHimes&lt;br /&gt;
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I was interested in the statements made about black women and their roles in Women&amp;#039;s History. Most of the time, people tend to combine all women into one category and forget that it is still important to focus on individual groups separately also. Historians may want to homogenize all women together when studying or writing about women but the reality is that they do have a separate history to that of white women. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I was particularly interested in Kate Haulman&amp;#039;s idea that identifying factors such as gender and race are created and fluid rather than having a sort of naturally fixed meaning.  This notion gives richer meaning to the larger social and cultural narrative of any nation or people.  -Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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The two most interesting articles to me were Kate Haulman&amp;#039;s article and Leslie Alexander&amp;#039;s. I agree with Erin about Haulman&amp;#039;s approach. I found Haulman&amp;#039;s article reminiscent of an article written by George Kennan. The article written by Kennan describes the difficulty in describing history because there is no specific beginning or end. I thought that theme was pertinent throughout Haulman&amp;#039;s reading. The last reading written by Alexander made some good arguments and had an interesting approach. At first I was surprised by her resistance to grouping both black and white women together as a &amp;quot;homogeneous womanhood,&amp;quot; but after pondering for a few minutes it makes sense. --MDvorak&lt;br /&gt;
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I think equality based on the sameness between men and women versus equality with a recognition of the differences between men and women is an interesting concept, one that was likely very important and dividing as women were defining their expectations of equality. We’ve come to expect that women be treated the same as men, but to what extend is appropriate? Under the equality of sameness sometimes women who are on maternity leave are listed as being on disabled leave. It’s a little insulting to infer that pregnancy is a disability (though I’m sure a few people would argue that it is). -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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The focus on women&amp;#039;s history as opposed to studying men and women in history combined is an important distinction. Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s essay and dichotomies describe how distinct men really are from women. Men and women are different in many ways including &amp;quot;working&amp;quot; at home or at the office and whether taking care of the family is considered work. The terms &amp;quot;sex&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;gender&amp;quot; are also scrutinized for one relates more to motherhood and being able to give birth than the other. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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All women aren’t united under the cause of women’s rights because they have had different experiences that have resulted from race, class, socio-economic status, and more, which according to Leslie Alexander also extends into the study and interpretation of women’s history by historians. She focuses on the particular issues of race and argues that the feminist movement is only useful as a lens for studying the experiences of white women, not the experiences of black women. While her view certainly has merit, by dismissing feminism’s use to black women in the manner she does it almost seems like she’s suggesting that the feminist movement is useful for considering all white women in general, while I would argue that it is most useful in regards to only a certain group of white women, particularly of the middle-class. Similarly, there is no simple lens to study the experiences of black women, as they are also influenced by a variety of factors beyond that of race alone. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree completely with Taylor&amp;#039;s above comments.  It is easy to see where Alexander comes from in contrasting Black women&amp;#039;s history against those of what is generally thought of as Women&amp;#039;s history.  However, black women do fall under the umbrella of women&amp;#039;s history, just as african-americans and women fall under the umbrella of history.  There can always be subdivisions/classifications within different fields of study. There&amp;#039;s always going to be at least one (but probably more) group or culture that is overlooked and one that is the focus.  While women&amp;#039;s history is focused on generally the upper-middle class of white women, thats primarily because those were the people leaving primary sources behind. We can&amp;#039;t go back and teach slaves and later generations to write in diaries or send letters, so it is increasingly difficult to find sources from the time documenting their experiences.  - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s essay on dichotomies the most intriguing of all. By using these comparisons, I found that she fantastically described many of the social and political struggles that women face while describing different categories that scholars study women under. My favorite was the dichotomy of Integration vs. Autonomy because I had no idea that there was such argument going on about where Women&amp;#039;s History should be included in a course of study as well as what it should include in itself. This argument of whether Women&amp;#039;s History should be autonomous or integrated with such things as Gender History seemed like a parallel to feminist controversies in modern day social and work settings. I have often heard the argument that if women want to be integrated with men, then they should be treated the same, no special exceptions. But, if they want to keep things like maternity leave and not getting drafted, then they should remain autonomous with perhaps less benefits than men receive. I think that Bock definitely provided some interesting parallels between womens history controversies and modern social controversies. -- Angie W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Leslie Alexander puts forth an interesting idea when she says that &amp;quot;the recognition that Black and White women are culturally different opens a Pandora&amp;#039;s box...&amp;quot; (p. 20) because it is something that many young feminists never consider, but when they do, they realize that is so very true. If historians and feminists were to recognize this, then their theory of one, strong womanhood would be attacked. Like Alexander said, Black women often name their race as their main identifying factor while most white women, especially feminists, put woman. If women&amp;#039;s history scholars were to recognize this, then they would have to take another look at women&amp;#039;s history and perhaps separate not just separate women from men, but also from each other based on their class, race, and even sexual orientation. This would put a whole new spin on feminism and women&amp;#039;s studies. -- Angie W.&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the key components in the study of women&amp;#039;s history is the recognition and understanding that different cultures expose women to different challenges.  Alexander notes in her essay that to acknowledge the black and white women have different histories because of cultural differences seems to be obvious.  We do not assume that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have a bond simply because they were both of the same gender.  It would be ludicrous to assume that all women have experienced the same histories and lives. - efritz&lt;br /&gt;
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efritz certainly makes some good points.  There are definitely similarities between white and black women, the simplest being they are both women.  However, I strongly disagree with having a universal image for women.  Even white women are different from each other, based on things like their environment, family upbringing, or culture.  So, of course white women and black women would vary from each other.  When Alexander talked about it being obvious for these women to have different histories, I agreed.  I had been surprised to find that historians had thought differently until it was strongly pointed out to them! -- CBrau&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Taylors interpretation of equality between the sexes.  The women&amp;#039;s movement of the 1970&amp;#039;s was a tremendous boost to elevating the status of women in society.  It assisted in raising wages of women to be closer to those of men, and allowed women to enter into occupations traditionally held by men.  But how far do we want to go with equality?  Men and women are different physically and physiologically for a reason.  Women should be valued the same as men but I think that to deny that there are differences is also incorrect. -efritz&lt;br /&gt;
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I thoroughly enjoyed this reading.  I particularly liked how class and race were emphasized in all four of the essays.  The essay by Gisela Bock was interesting and raised a lot of good questions. As Angie pointed out, Bock does cover some of the basic struggles women face today and how scholars interpret these struggles, a point I found intriguing. A question I have, based off the reading is how each of the dichotomies she listed are specifically present today (as far as where), how much of an impact do they have on women in society and how much of an impact they currently have on the writing of women&amp;#039;s history? I agree with the statement posted by efritz on equality.  Although I do believe men and women should have equal opportunity, I think there should be a clear distinction between both men and women. -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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Leslie M. Alexander raised a lot of great points as well.  I agree with Mmackey&amp;#039;s statement that grouping all women together as a whole without the emphasis on the black woman (race, more broadly.  In my opinion, ignoring Alexander&amp;#039;s intricate tie to the community would hurt the writing of women&amp;#039;s history, especially in terms of race and class.  A challenge, I believe, that comes into play when writing Black women&amp;#039;s history is the lack of sources available to accurately depict a Black women&amp;#039;s lives (more specifically and broadly, women classified as other than &amp;#039;white&amp;#039;) throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth century. A question I have is what sources are currently available and in what quantity?  How hard is it to accurately write a history of black women versus white women when a limited number of sources are available and, are scholars able to work through this lack of material?   -abratchi&lt;br /&gt;
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In regards to Kate Haulman&amp;#039;s reading I found her comments regarding woman&amp;#039;s work versus mans work on page 5, &amp;quot;knitting as woman&amp;#039;s work versus carpentry as man&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; interesting. She attempts to redefine gender roles and challenge how we view women and men in society. I agree with efritz&amp;#039;s comment the roles should not be stereotyped by gender males and females can perform the same duty and have a common goal of providing for themselves/family. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I also agree with Erin S.&amp;#039;s comments earlier on Bock&amp;#039;s definitions of women, she looks at them in two separate spheres but the last sentence in her reading stood out the most to me. She is defining women as being in the home by baking the cake and making sure everyone else is satisfied before she even helps herself. Bock does recognize different approaches need to be taken in studying women but do other historians believe women have always acted this way? Or is this the role women were suppose to play as the provider for the family, never putting her needs before anyone elses? - Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading Leslie Alexander&amp;#039;s article on Black women, I believe Black women have definitely earned their own category in the study of history. Their lives cannot be placed into the general women&amp;#039;s history category... and I completely agree with Alexander on that point. Black women experienced much more turmoil than the regular resistance white women faced. I do think it is interesting how Black women&amp;#039;s history cannot just focus on the women, but instead, the entirety of their lives, including family, home life, and community. I had no idea that women&amp;#039;s studies used to promote &amp;quot;homogeneity&amp;quot; within the field. I do not think that is possible, because while each woman struggled, every single diverse group within the category of women&amp;#039;s history had a different struggle than another group, so I feel it is almost impossible to create a homogeneous concept within women&amp;#039;s studies. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Bock&amp;#039;s discussion on the new dichotomies of women&amp;#039;s studies to be the most interesting, particularly sex versus gender.  I often hear people around me speak as if there are certain things women do and certain things men do, simply because they are biologically programmed that way by their sex, which is an example of what she refers to as the &amp;quot;social gender.&amp;quot;  Not that we should ignore biology completely, but I think our society allows it to become too much of the focus when talking about the differences between men and women.  --- Alice W&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the section on page four that discussion the &amp;quot;Female World of Love and Ritual&amp;quot; I found it interesting that women were able to establish such a difinitive bond with one another during the Victorian age which seemed markedly known for its rigid social rules. Perhaps it was out of this society that women found it necessary to establish bonds when they are so often excluded from the outside world. It is also an interesting and different way to view womens history in regards to their interactions with one another as opposed to their interactions with men. I feel like this is a perspective which might often be overlooked.--Emma&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_15_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 15 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_15_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-12-03T15:26:40Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Clara Lanza, 1891, defends the female office clerk in NY */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Comparative source questions&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I’m curious to what extent women truly believed that they were morally superior to men. They certainly used it to justify women taking a part in activities that were not typically approved of for women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; For instance, one of Clara Lanza’s arguments for women working outside the home in clerical positions was that women’s morality would improve the business world. Some women’s rights activists also used that argument for why women should be able to vote. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Were they consciously manipulating the rhetoric of the day or did they just naturally assume it to be the truth?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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One commonality between some readings for this week is the emphasis that women placed on their eduction.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Although an education was more available to working class women than it had been during the eighteenth century, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;availability did not always translate to attainability.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; For example, in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Lucy Salmon&amp;#039;s study&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, she came across domestic servicewomen working &amp;quot;eighteen hours&amp;quot; a day. This amount of labor would leave little time for women to acquire the skills necessary for what Salmon calls &amp;quot;intelligent work&amp;quot;. In another story, 16 year-old &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Sadie Frowne&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; worked an arduous eleven hours a day in a sweatshop, but long hours did not stop her from &amp;quot;going to school at night&amp;quot;. Her case must have been somewhat exceptional; if most young laborers had opportunities like Sadie, organizations such as the Knights of Labor would have no need to focus their agenda on &amp;quot;taking little girls from the factory ... and educating them&amp;quot;. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Woloch, Chapter 13, Urban Wage Earners&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Helen Campbell, 1893, study on NY wage laborers, “Shop Girls and Piece Workers” ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting how she said that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;the girls who worked in the shops: &amp;quot;she knows far better what constitutes the life of the rich than the rich ever know of the life of the poor...of the woman she so often despises, even when longing the most to be one of them. She imitates where she can...&amp;quot;(bottom of page 294). This is further emphasizing the desire of lower-class women to be like the upper class, to strive for that &amp;#039;perfect life.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It is a striking contrast that the girl hates the rich women, yet longs to be like them. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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Interesting article.  Do you think focusing on women in poverty made for a more effective argument against the evils of poverty since women were supposed to be part of the work force? -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it was a way to emphasize the evils of poverty. Obviously, these women were unable to stay in the domestic sphere. They had no choice but to work. I think focusing on horrible factory jobs that these women had to do definitely emphasizes this. I don&amp;#039;t think that focusing on men working these jobs would gain very much attention. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lucy Maynard Salmon, 1897, Vassar Historian who studied domestic service ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I noticed a difference in the way that working women were described in comparison to the language used about domestic women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Working women saw themselves as being immersed in society and into the world but a domestic woman &amp;quot;never read and does not know what is going on in the world.&amp;quot; (P. 298) The working women also describe domestic women as having so much time on their hands, almost insinuating that domestic women&amp;#039;s work is not equal to theirs. It was interesting how the working women say they enjoy their job more than they would being a domestic woman. They enjoy the freedom they have to go out and work, but then come home and do whatever they please. Their work and home lives are completely separate. Oppositely, domestic women are always around their work, continuously tending to the family and the house whenever it is needed. There are not set hours of work for domestic women.... their work is their life. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Alex on her ideas about working women. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;They saw themselves as in the world and intouch with society and it made me wonder if they were the real reason behind the push for women&amp;#039;s rights? I know middle class women were heavily involved in shaping women&amp;#039;s rights but did the efforts of the working class women make a difference?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Working class women were proud of what they accomplished and according to this article boasted about what they could do, I agree a woman can do anything she sets her mind to but in a way didn&amp;#039;t all women shape the womens rights movement? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the thing that struck me most about this article was the first industrial advantage.  While I know it was not uncommon for a woman to work during this time period I had always thought it was out of necessity. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The idea of opportunities for promotion suggests the idea of a career to me as opposed to a job.  Do you think jobs with promotions indicate a shift towards careers and less focus on the domestic duties of marriage?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Later in the piece the young factory operative explains how domestic servants don&amp;#039;t make good wives.  I suppose I am just wondering what kind of role marriage played when women went looking for work. -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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This set of readings reminds me of a &amp;#039;&amp;#039;A Tree Grows in Brooklyn&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Like John, I was a little thrown off by the first and second disadvantages listed.  My impression of this time period for working women did not include the idea of shopping for a career, which is how the questionnaires seemed to make it sound.  Is it safe to assume that domestic servants were basically on-call day and night?  In the footnotes, many of the comments from domestic servants mentioned the irritation of working on sundays, one commenting that it&amp;#039;s actually extra work.  The time that people in most other employment have to relax and be with family and friends is, by design, her busiest time.  Like waiters and waitresses today. -erin b.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that the gaining a promotion does make this job seem more like a career. These women seemed content with working. I had also assumed that women that worked did it because they had to. I never thought that they found pride in it. I also agree with Megan that these women had a bigger part in the womens&amp;#039; rights movement than I had previously thought. I&amp;#039;m sure these women thought they had nothing in common with the middle class women working in the movement. Overall, I think they did play a part. It may not have been the part that middle class women would have wanted, but these women were out having careers at a time when women were supposed to stay at home. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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Last year I read a book about modern domestic service, an field that was mostly dominated by latin american women. In the book one of the discussions dealt with the comparisons between women who were live in housekeepers and those that commuted to their job from there own home. I wonder if there was any such comparison with 19th century domestic workers. I&amp;#039;d imagine that young girls were much more likely to live with their employers then older women in the service. But were domestic servants mostly young or older women?----Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Isabel Eaton, 1899, research on black servants in Philadelphia ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Unlike the white women urban workers we read about for this week, this piece shows how little choice black women urban workers had in occupations.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Most were domestic servants. Even those who were educated or had other job training could not get the jobs they wanted and were qualified for. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The racial discrimination they experienced kept them locked into a job they felt was socially degrading and that provided little personal freedom and low wages.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Due to being turned down, or even the fear of being turned down, most were kept them from seeking jobs outside of domestic service. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;So while white women with an education or job training could afford to be independent and had new job opportunities opened to them, black women were less likely to be able to experience this type of independence.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
--Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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This article is sad because it shows us how race oriented people were even after the Civil War, but it is already a well known that Blacks did not reach any kind of true equality until the 20th century though. Actually, while I was reading this, I came up with kind of a random but related question: &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In the Antebellum South, when there was still slavery, the slaves would &amp;quot;fight back&amp;quot; in any way they could, including pretending to be really stupid so that they may screw up the task assigned to them, etc. So, I was wondering if this form of retaliation might have had any sort of negative impact after the Civil War for blacks searching for jobs (mostly in the south since that is where such things usually took place)?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that it had to have a negative impact on them after the Civil War. It just perpetuated the stereotype that blacks were stupid and inferior. However, I&amp;#039;m not sure that it would have made a difference if they were the smartest people in the whole world. Whites were convinced that they were inferior and I doubt that they would have been willing to see anything else.-Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Clara Lanza, 1891, defends the female office clerk in NY ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Looking at The Office Clerk by Clara Lanza many things stand out to me. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This piece is justifying the use of women as clerks. However, this justification feeds into the women’s assumed gender roles during that time period as much as the men’s justification as to why women should not be clerks. Both arguments use the overarching gender roles of the time.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Men argue that women should remain in the home and be good wives and raise their children, they also argue that women fidget, they become anxious, they are temperamental, they giggle, and so on… these characteristics all fit into what women were presumed to be like. The counter this argument, Clara Lanza believes that women are more reliable than men, they come to work when sick, they don’t complain, and they can do all of this while being great wives. Both sides to this argument use what everyone would agree are characteristics of women of that time and the roles people expected them to play, just in different ways. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This is similar to the arguments for and against women abolitionists and reformers, it is very interesting how gender roles can be used as justifications for different things.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Based off of the readings about women’s roles as activists for women’s rights I can tell that the same use of gender roles as justifications for and against the movement being used here as well. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree a lot with Erin. Ms. Lanza states in the beginning of her response that &amp;quot;Among the woman workers in New York there are none who afford a more interesting study than the vast army of clerks, the work of a clerk being admirably adapted to the sex.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;While I think expected gender roles play a large part- the exactness of women&amp;#039;s work, their reliability, and the ways in which they can be trusted- I also wonder if, at this time, there were beginning to be notions of differences between &amp;quot;sex&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;gender&amp;quot;, one of the arguments, I think, of the feminist movement during the 20th Century, with gender being thought of as very much socially constructed.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It almost seems like Ms. Lanza would make many of those in the women&amp;#039;s movement at the time or the feminist movement today kind of angry- &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it seems as if in many ways she is very much defending the gender roles and stereotypes about women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the transition of the office clerk position is very interesting. First it was highly desirable as a male profession then the transition was made and it became a highly desirable female position. I wonder what the reasons were for the switch in gender role assignments. Now in modern society often women are looked down upon for simply performing secretarial work, and if a man did enter in the profession he would probably face ridicule because it is as much a female dominated profession today as it was in the late 19th century--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Leonara Barry, on what the Knights of Labor are doing for women, 1888 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article provides some moral relief from the sources in this week&amp;#039;s reading that are exemplary of ideologies which exacerbated conditions for women in the workplace. For example, the &amp;quot;difficulty&amp;quot; American-born girls felt about competing against a &amp;quot;foreign born and colored element,&amp;quot; (297) noted and justified by Lucy Salmon, is ridiculous; Isabel Eaton, a black domestic worker, claims that black domestic workers often can&amp;#039;t secure work because &amp;quot;white help is preferred&amp;quot; (299). Racial divides like this, so incorporated into American society, emphasize just how radical the Knights of Labor organization was to accept laborers regardless of race or gender. Are their radical methods generally blamed for the groups eventual failure? --Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sadie Frome, 1902, “Story of a Sweatshop Girl” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked Sadie&amp;#039;s story.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I thought it was neat how she talked about her social activities outside of work- going to school at night and to the synagogue, having her fortune read by a fortune teller, and going out with Henry, to the theater, or dancing or to Coney Island. She seems like the quintessential &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; young woman of the early twentieth century- she is independent, able to save her money, and not ready to settle down and marry Henry, even though he wants her to. She seems very content with her situation right now and her life as it is- as if she is not ready for things to change just yet and is enjoying the benefits of her hard work and her independence.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I really kind of admire her! -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved Sadie&amp;#039;s story. She is a very practical person. She saves money and she knows how to have fun. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was a little disturbed by the matter or fact way she talks about getting her finger caught in the needle and how it could result in a broken bone or dismemberment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She did not seem concerned that it could happen to her. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think it is funny that she keeps putting Henry off and that she does not want to get married.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I admire her independence. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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Just like LeAnn and Allison said, I also enjoyed reading Sadie&amp;#039;s story. It amazed me how she lived such a simple life, yet she was so content because she was independent and making money for herself. I found it interesting how she could only live on $2 a week! She even went on to say she could &amp;quot;have lived cheaper, but we are both fond of good things and felt that we could afford them.&amp;quot; (P. 308) $2 a week! That is literally impossible now a days. But Sadie claimed the $2 was enough for her to get by on and live comfortably. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I noticed the marriage decision she made. It is interesting to see the progression over the course of the centuries. Women insisted on waiting instead of being married in their teenage years. Could it be because they were making a life for themselves and wanted to establish their own independence before getting married?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also very much enjoyed Sadie’s story, as she really lived the American dream.  Having found trouble in her homeland, her mother and her moved to America, and with the help of family members here, was able to set up a home, find a job, save money, and live decently well.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I can understand her desire to hold off on marriage, as she was successful in gaining independence and personal autonomy, which would most likely be revoked upon her marriage. Her desire for nice clothes was endearing as it reminded me much of the desires of young women today, and because she was also successful in saving there was no reason for her not to have nicer clothes, especially since she believed that a “girl who does not dress well is stuck in the corner” (311). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Her independence and savvyness allows her that luxury and because of that - no one puts Sadie in the corner.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found it interesting that Sadie received /modest/$5.50 a week for her work. I don’t know what the average living costs of the time were and I don’t know what the average wage of men or women of the time but $5.50 seems quite a lot compared to the women mentioned in Helen Campbell’s piece on Shop girls and Piece Workers, and modest doesn’t seem to be the right adjective when comparing it to Campbell’s women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Sadie used two dollars per week for living costs, saved one, and one dollar went to spend on clothing and pleasure. &lt;br /&gt;
I love the mention of the fortune teller in this piece and the mention to the alarm clock that she can’t believe that because “I don’t see who the clock would know.” –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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I also really liked this story. It was definitely a change to read about her social outings. I also thought it was amazing that Sadie made $5.50 a week and was able to support herself, save, and have a little extra spending money. I was also wondering what the average wage of men at the time was. Sadie&amp;#039;s pay does seem better than the pay in the piece workers article. I&amp;#039;m just wondering how it compares to a man&amp;#039;s pay. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Woloch, Chapter 16, Woman Suffrage/Women’s Rights&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Julia Ward Howe, 1899, Reminiscences ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed reading Julia&amp;#039;s Reminiscences as she tells her little story.  When she said that part about when she said &amp;quot; &amp;#039;I am with you&amp;#039; I have been with them ever since&amp;quot; I found that very touching. That and the last line about how although she gave a lot to the cause, it was repaid to her thousandfold.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She was very proud of the work done as she should have been.  She spoke of how the first 2/3 of her life were spent believing the masculine ideal of character as the only one...&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I liked the whole thing. She just seemed really endearing and heartfelt.  -  Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Stanton and Anthony, 1882, piece in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;History of Woman Suffrage&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in Political Lessons take a unique and direct approach to gain women’s suffrage. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Based off of their arguments, I can see why they may have been threatening. They argue that women, in all actuality, are quiet geniuses, unable to voice their opinions and they are frustrated.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; This goes completely against the gender roles of the time, which perceive women to be inferior people who were meant to stay home and care for her family who didn’t really have any real political opinions of her own and who followed their husband’s views. I also think that it was very bold for them to bring up topics such as class and race, and relate them to women&amp;#039;s gender roles. I can see why this could be appealing for some and scary for others. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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To be a white man of political position in this time, it must have been pretty intimidating to realize the eventuality of truly universal suffrage.  As Stanton and Anthony point out in this, enfranchising african americans and women would more than double the voters, and those numbers would come largely from demographics whose interests weren&amp;#039;t protected politically the same way white business-owning men&amp;#039;s were.  As Erin already said, the presence of these women even through just this passage is fairly intimidating and simultaneously inspiring.  That this was written in 1882 and it took so many more years for women to be granted suffrage, and that the evolution of women&amp;#039;s rights moved as slowly as it did is relatively surprising.  The activism of Stanton and Anthony seemed very inspiring.  - erin b.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Frances Ellen (Watkins) Harper, 1866 Woman’s Rights convention ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;quot;We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.&amp;quot;  Strong words that people still need to come terms with today.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I really enjoyed reading her speech.  I feel so much more for the black woman of the time because they were fighting a double fight: race and gender rights were needed.  Bringing up the &amp;quot;wrongs&amp;quot; done to the blacks by the whites was a powerful message, especially when she contrasted it to the &amp;quot;rights&amp;quot; that the &amp;quot;white women&amp;quot; keep takling about.  - christine&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I felt deeply sorry for Frances Harper,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; not only was she a woman but also a black widow who inherited the role of provider for four children, only one of whom she was the true mother to. She quickly points out that if she was a man, she would not have been violated in the same terms and would have been as seen as more equal before law. I think her message of saying giving women the right to vote would not cure all injustice against women, and race would be a big factor. She knows the terms of the country and understands that while big steps are needed the country would work a step at a time to achieve equality. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I also feel sorry for Frances Harper. It would be hard enough at this time to be either a woman or black, but to be both would be incredibly difficult. Even if someone didn&amp;#039;t hate you because you were black, they probably thought you were dumb because you were a woman. When we talked about her in class, I wasn&amp;#039;t sure that I agreed with her idea of gaining rights for black men before women. After reading this, I think I see her point. Even if women gained the right to vote, black women would still be excluded, either legally or illegally. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Shoe women of Lynn, MA, 1874 ==&lt;br /&gt;
In Shoemakers of Lynn, these women seemed very robust and seemed to want to do things that man does (such as chew tobacco and spit on the floor) and not be judged that it was not a “lady like” thing to do.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It’s interesting that she refers to women as slaves to men.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;What I thought stood out was when she spoke about women who are married, that they have no need for anything and have no idea the oppression that those who were not married had to face.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   -Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Americus provides an interesting counter to women’s suffrage that I hadn’t considered. She wrote that the day she takes the ballot “will bring with it a conviction that the judgment I rely on has failed me, and the arm upon which I lean, is powerless to protect (367).” She felt that women’s suffrage would ultimately question female judgment. Women relied on their husbands willingly, but suggesting that they needed to vote would also suggest that their husbands weren’t what they trusted them to be, and that perhaps women couldn’t trust themselves either if they were able to be so completely deceived.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In many ways, the women’s rights movement was elitist.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Wealthy women who had the leisure time to campaign for suffrage often asserted that they should vote to help counteract the votes of the working class. Working class women were less likely to participate in the women’s rights movement, therefore&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I thought Ella A. Little’s letter was pretty awesome. Her argument was that wealthy women did not really understand oppression and that working class women who had to “battle” to “earn their livelihood” were in more desperate need for the right to vote.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think it is really sad that this opinion is not often heard in the women’s rights movement.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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“Americus” was some character.  “Americus” described chewing tobacco and spitting it on the floor as a right. Snoring was also described as a right, because, I suppose, it was more acceptable for men to snore. I thought it interesting that they compared the fact of being a woman to the idea of slavery when as the NWSA they were not fighting for the right of African Amerian’s suffrage, they were first focused on the right for women to vote. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It amused me that apparently as soon as women gained the right to vote that as a whole they’d be less timid and not afraid of “burglars nights” as well as chew and spit tobacco and snore&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (the latter two mentioned before). –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Amelia Barr, (novelist and married) 1896, Speaks out against female suffrage ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I still think that it is a little weird whenever I hear about a woman who did not want rights or did not see them as important to have. Maybe they couldn&amp;#039;t miss something they never had?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; In the document, she argued that if women were given rights they would have become tools, made irrational decisions, and be less likely to defend the nation. She also says that women are born graceful and soft and therefore could never do the work that rough men do. If I were a woman in the late Nineteenth Century, I would have just wanted to be seen as an equal to men and know that I would be treated fairly in court or receive an equal distribution of property or wealth from my deceased husband. I wouldn&amp;#039;t consider those two examples as doing &amp;quot;the work of the virile virtues of men.&amp;quot; - Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I found what Amelia Barr wrote very interesting.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She’s not against discontented women in the working class fighting for better wages but rather against women in the political realm&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  I think she’s saying women are too fickle to make political decisions like decisions of war and that law would be in danger in the hands of women.  Another point, I think she tried to make is that when a women steps out of the “domestic sphere” she put herself at risk for being criticized by a man (creating animosity) and Barr believed only women should criticize other women.  - Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I disagree with pretty much everything she has to say but I can totally see the women of her time agreeing with her. She promotes stereotypes which annoys me.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She asks if women get what they want and if they are allowed to work as men whether they will be happy. She asks if men&amp;#039;s work is less tiresome then women&amp;#039;s. Basically, isn&amp;#039;t work just work? These are definitely interesting questions. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I can understand why Amelia Barr would have followers, even though I totally disagree, as her arguments are written very well and she has arguments that attack women’s moral and sensible duties, such as their religion, their obligation to their families, and their femininity.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Specifically her writing about women’s ability to vote and work and that her desire for knowledge was unnecessary and will take away her femininity was interesting to me, and made me wonder&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; what she, or others like her, would think of the women of today? Would she see our accomplishments as really our failure as women? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anna Garlin Spencer, 1898, response to anti-suffrage attacks ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Spencer&amp;#039;s reasoning for why women should have the right to vote was unique. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She claimed that once the government began to get involved in matters dealing with &amp;quot;any form of educative, charitable or personally helpful work, it entered the area of distinctive feminine training and power.&amp;quot; Once the government entered that woman&amp;#039;s sphere, it became involved in women&amp;#039;s lives, which meant women had a say in what the government did, especially in that female sphere.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She made it seem like women had the right to be involved because of the government&amp;#039;s entrance into their lives. She also implied that without women&amp;#039;s suffrage, the government could not adequately function/make beneficial decisions in the woman&amp;#039;s sphere of influence. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 20th Century feminist, 1903, The Home ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman&amp;#039;s piece, the reader gets the idea that she obviously thinks there is more to women than being housewives and mothers. She argues that women should be able to participate in society and not be stuck at home. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The idea of a &amp;quot;home-husband&amp;quot; was a funny concept. She said, and I agree, &amp;quot;Never was any such idiot on earth as this hypothetical home-husband. It was not in him to stay in such primitive restrictions. But he has been quite willing to leave his wife in that interestingly remote period.&amp;quot; Men are so adamant about keeping females inside the home but having the roles be reversed would be out of the question.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I think &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;in order for the women’s rights movement to proceed, people had to move beyond the idea that women were “naturally” moral and nurturing. I don’t think nineteenth-century Americans saw gender as fluid and dynamic, instead it was prescribed by God.  In order to change, they needed to learn to see it as less of a biological function, and more of a result of socialization. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Radicals such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman&amp;#039;&amp;#039; lead the way with ideas that women’s forced isolation in the home made them less capable for a public role rather than a natural lack of abilities.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Allison Luthern&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_15_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 15 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_15_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-12-03T14:45:18Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Lucy Maynard Salmon, 1897, Vassar Historian who studied domestic service */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Comparative source questions&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I’m curious to what extent women truly believed that they were morally superior to men. They certainly used it to justify women taking a part in activities that were not typically approved of for women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; For instance, one of Clara Lanza’s arguments for women working outside the home in clerical positions was that women’s morality would improve the business world. Some women’s rights activists also used that argument for why women should be able to vote. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Were they consciously manipulating the rhetoric of the day or did they just naturally assume it to be the truth?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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One commonality between some readings for this week is the emphasis that women placed on their eduction.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Although an education was more available to working class women than it had been during the eighteenth century, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;availability did not always translate to attainability.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; For example, in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Lucy Salmon&amp;#039;s study&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, she came across domestic servicewomen working &amp;quot;eighteen hours&amp;quot; a day. This amount of labor would leave little time for women to acquire the skills necessary for what Salmon calls &amp;quot;intelligent work&amp;quot;. In another story, 16 year-old &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Sadie Frowne&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; worked an arduous eleven hours a day in a sweatshop, but long hours did not stop her from &amp;quot;going to school at night&amp;quot;. Her case must have been somewhat exceptional; if most young laborers had opportunities like Sadie, organizations such as the Knights of Labor would have no need to focus their agenda on &amp;quot;taking little girls from the factory ... and educating them&amp;quot;. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Woloch, Chapter 13, Urban Wage Earners&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Helen Campbell, 1893, study on NY wage laborers, “Shop Girls and Piece Workers” ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting how she said that &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;the girls who worked in the shops: &amp;quot;she knows far better what constitutes the life of the rich than the rich ever know of the life of the poor...of the woman she so often despises, even when longing the most to be one of them. She imitates where she can...&amp;quot;(bottom of page 294). This is further emphasizing the desire of lower-class women to be like the upper class, to strive for that &amp;#039;perfect life.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It is a striking contrast that the girl hates the rich women, yet longs to be like them. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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Interesting article.  Do you think focusing on women in poverty made for a more effective argument against the evils of poverty since women were supposed to be part of the work force? -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it was a way to emphasize the evils of poverty. Obviously, these women were unable to stay in the domestic sphere. They had no choice but to work. I think focusing on horrible factory jobs that these women had to do definitely emphasizes this. I don&amp;#039;t think that focusing on men working these jobs would gain very much attention. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lucy Maynard Salmon, 1897, Vassar Historian who studied domestic service ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I noticed a difference in the way that working women were described in comparison to the language used about domestic women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Working women saw themselves as being immersed in society and into the world but a domestic woman &amp;quot;never read and does not know what is going on in the world.&amp;quot; (P. 298) The working women also describe domestic women as having so much time on their hands, almost insinuating that domestic women&amp;#039;s work is not equal to theirs. It was interesting how the working women say they enjoy their job more than they would being a domestic woman. They enjoy the freedom they have to go out and work, but then come home and do whatever they please. Their work and home lives are completely separate. Oppositely, domestic women are always around their work, continuously tending to the family and the house whenever it is needed. There are not set hours of work for domestic women.... their work is their life. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Alex on her ideas about working women. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;They saw themselves as in the world and intouch with society and it made me wonder if they were the real reason behind the push for women&amp;#039;s rights? I know middle class women were heavily involved in shaping women&amp;#039;s rights but did the efforts of the working class women make a difference?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Working class women were proud of what they accomplished and according to this article boasted about what they could do, I agree a woman can do anything she sets her mind to but in a way didn&amp;#039;t all women shape the womens rights movement? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the thing that struck me most about this article was the first industrial advantage.  While I know it was not uncommon for a woman to work during this time period I had always thought it was out of necessity. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The idea of opportunities for promotion suggests the idea of a career to me as opposed to a job.  Do you think jobs with promotions indicate a shift towards careers and less focus on the domestic duties of marriage?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Later in the piece the young factory operative explains how domestic servants don&amp;#039;t make good wives.  I suppose I am just wondering what kind of role marriage played when women went looking for work. -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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This set of readings reminds me of a &amp;#039;&amp;#039;A Tree Grows in Brooklyn&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Italic text&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  Like John, I was a little thrown off by the first and second disadvantages listed.  My impression of this time period for working women did not include the idea of shopping for a career, which is how the questionnaires seemed to make it sound.  Is it safe to assume that domestic servants were basically on-call day and night?  In the footnotes, many of the comments from domestic servants mentioned the irritation of working on sundays, one commenting that it&amp;#039;s actually extra work.  The time that people in most other employment have to relax and be with family and friends is, by design, her busiest time.  Like waiters and waitresses today. -erin b.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that the gaining a promotion does make this job seem more like a career. These women seemed content with working. I had also assumed that women that worked did it because they had to. I never thought that they found pride in it. I also agree with Megan that these women had a bigger part in the womens&amp;#039; rights movement than I had previously thought. I&amp;#039;m sure these women thought they had nothing in common with the middle class women working in the movement. Overall, I think they did play a part. It may not have been the part that middle class women would have wanted, but these women were out having careers at a time when women were supposed to stay at home. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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Last year I read a book about modern domestic service, an field that was mostly dominated by latin american women. In the book one of the discussions dealt with the comparisons between women who were live in housekeepers and those that commuted to their job from there own home. I wonder if there was any such comparison with 19th century domestic workers. I&amp;#039;d imagine that young girls were much more likely to live with their employers then older women in the service. But were domestic servants mostly young or older women?----Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Isabel Eaton, 1899, research on black servants in Philadelphia ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Unlike the white women urban workers we read about for this week, this piece shows how little choice black women urban workers had in occupations.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Most were domestic servants. Even those who were educated or had other job training could not get the jobs they wanted and were qualified for. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The racial discrimination they experienced kept them locked into a job they felt was socially degrading and that provided little personal freedom and low wages.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Due to being turned down, or even the fear of being turned down, most were kept them from seeking jobs outside of domestic service. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;So while white women with an education or job training could afford to be independent and had new job opportunities opened to them, black women were less likely to be able to experience this type of independence.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
--Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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This article is sad because it shows us how race oriented people were even after the Civil War, but it is already a well known that Blacks did not reach any kind of true equality until the 20th century though. Actually, while I was reading this, I came up with kind of a random but related question: &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In the Antebellum South, when there was still slavery, the slaves would &amp;quot;fight back&amp;quot; in any way they could, including pretending to be really stupid so that they may screw up the task assigned to them, etc. So, I was wondering if this form of retaliation might have had any sort of negative impact after the Civil War for blacks searching for jobs (mostly in the south since that is where such things usually took place)?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that it had to have a negative impact on them after the Civil War. It just perpetuated the stereotype that blacks were stupid and inferior. However, I&amp;#039;m not sure that it would have made a difference if they were the smartest people in the whole world. Whites were convinced that they were inferior and I doubt that they would have been willing to see anything else.-Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Clara Lanza, 1891, defends the female office clerk in NY ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Looking at The Office Clerk by Clara Lanza many things stand out to me. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This piece is justifying the use of women as clerks. However, this justification feeds into the women’s assumed gender roles during that time period as much as the men’s justification as to why women should not be clerks. Both arguments use the overarching gender roles of the time.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Men argue that women should remain in the home and be good wives and raise their children, they also argue that women fidget, they become anxious, they are temperamental, they giggle, and so on… these characteristics all fit into what women were presumed to be like. The counter this argument, Clara Lanza believes that women are more reliable than men, they come to work when sick, they don’t complain, and they can do all of this while being great wives. Both sides to this argument use what everyone would agree are characteristics of women of that time and the roles people expected them to play, just in different ways. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This is similar to the arguments for and against women abolitionists and reformers, it is very interesting how gender roles can be used as justifications for different things.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Based off of the readings about women’s roles as activists for women’s rights I can tell that the same use of gender roles as justifications for and against the movement being used here as well. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree a lot with Erin. Ms. Lanza states in the beginning of her response that &amp;quot;Among the woman workers in New York there are none who afford a more interesting study than the vast army of clerks, the work of a clerk being admirably adapted to the sex.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;While I think expected gender roles play a large part- the exactness of women&amp;#039;s work, their reliability, and the ways in which they can be trusted- I also wonder if, at this time, there were beginning to be notions of differences between &amp;quot;sex&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;gender&amp;quot;, one of the arguments, I think, of the feminist movement during the 20th Century, with gender being thought of as very much socially constructed.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; It almost seems like Ms. Lanza would make many of those in the women&amp;#039;s movement at the time or the feminist movement today kind of angry- &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it seems as if in many ways she is very much defending the gender roles and stereotypes about women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Leonara Barry, on what the Knights of Labor are doing for women, 1888 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This article provides some moral relief from the sources in this week&amp;#039;s reading that are exemplary of ideologies which exacerbated conditions for women in the workplace. For example, the &amp;quot;difficulty&amp;quot; American-born girls felt about competing against a &amp;quot;foreign born and colored element,&amp;quot; (297) noted and justified by Lucy Salmon, is ridiculous; Isabel Eaton, a black domestic worker, claims that black domestic workers often can&amp;#039;t secure work because &amp;quot;white help is preferred&amp;quot; (299). Racial divides like this, so incorporated into American society, emphasize just how radical the Knights of Labor organization was to accept laborers regardless of race or gender. Are their radical methods generally blamed for the groups eventual failure? --Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sadie Frome, 1902, “Story of a Sweatshop Girl” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked Sadie&amp;#039;s story.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I thought it was neat how she talked about her social activities outside of work- going to school at night and to the synagogue, having her fortune read by a fortune teller, and going out with Henry, to the theater, or dancing or to Coney Island. She seems like the quintessential &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; young woman of the early twentieth century- she is independent, able to save her money, and not ready to settle down and marry Henry, even though he wants her to. She seems very content with her situation right now and her life as it is- as if she is not ready for things to change just yet and is enjoying the benefits of her hard work and her independence.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I really kind of admire her! -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved Sadie&amp;#039;s story. She is a very practical person. She saves money and she knows how to have fun. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was a little disturbed by the matter or fact way she talks about getting her finger caught in the needle and how it could result in a broken bone or dismemberment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She did not seem concerned that it could happen to her. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think it is funny that she keeps putting Henry off and that she does not want to get married.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I admire her independence. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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Just like LeAnn and Allison said, I also enjoyed reading Sadie&amp;#039;s story. It amazed me how she lived such a simple life, yet she was so content because she was independent and making money for herself. I found it interesting how she could only live on $2 a week! She even went on to say she could &amp;quot;have lived cheaper, but we are both fond of good things and felt that we could afford them.&amp;quot; (P. 308) $2 a week! That is literally impossible now a days. But Sadie claimed the $2 was enough for her to get by on and live comfortably. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I noticed the marriage decision she made. It is interesting to see the progression over the course of the centuries. Women insisted on waiting instead of being married in their teenage years. Could it be because they were making a life for themselves and wanted to establish their own independence before getting married?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also very much enjoyed Sadie’s story, as she really lived the American dream.  Having found trouble in her homeland, her mother and her moved to America, and with the help of family members here, was able to set up a home, find a job, save money, and live decently well.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I can understand her desire to hold off on marriage, as she was successful in gaining independence and personal autonomy, which would most likely be revoked upon her marriage. Her desire for nice clothes was endearing as it reminded me much of the desires of young women today, and because she was also successful in saving there was no reason for her not to have nicer clothes, especially since she believed that a “girl who does not dress well is stuck in the corner” (311). &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Her independence and savvyness allows her that luxury and because of that - no one puts Sadie in the corner.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found it interesting that Sadie received /modest/$5.50 a week for her work. I don’t know what the average living costs of the time were and I don’t know what the average wage of men or women of the time but $5.50 seems quite a lot compared to the women mentioned in Helen Campbell’s piece on Shop girls and Piece Workers, and modest doesn’t seem to be the right adjective when comparing it to Campbell’s women.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Sadie used two dollars per week for living costs, saved one, and one dollar went to spend on clothing and pleasure. &lt;br /&gt;
I love the mention of the fortune teller in this piece and the mention to the alarm clock that she can’t believe that because “I don’t see who the clock would know.” –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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I also really liked this story. It was definitely a change to read about her social outings. I also thought it was amazing that Sadie made $5.50 a week and was able to support herself, save, and have a little extra spending money. I was also wondering what the average wage of men at the time was. Sadie&amp;#039;s pay does seem better than the pay in the piece workers article. I&amp;#039;m just wondering how it compares to a man&amp;#039;s pay. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Woloch, Chapter 16, Woman Suffrage/Women’s Rights&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Julia Ward Howe, 1899, Reminiscences ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed reading Julia&amp;#039;s Reminiscences as she tells her little story.  When she said that part about when she said &amp;quot; &amp;#039;I am with you&amp;#039; I have been with them ever since&amp;quot; I found that very touching. That and the last line about how although she gave a lot to the cause, it was repaid to her thousandfold.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She was very proud of the work done as she should have been.  She spoke of how the first 2/3 of her life were spent believing the masculine ideal of character as the only one...&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I liked the whole thing. She just seemed really endearing and heartfelt.  -  Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Stanton and Anthony, 1882, piece in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;History of Woman Suffrage&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in Political Lessons take a unique and direct approach to gain women’s suffrage. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Based off of their arguments, I can see why they may have been threatening. They argue that women, in all actuality, are quiet geniuses, unable to voice their opinions and they are frustrated.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; This goes completely against the gender roles of the time, which perceive women to be inferior people who were meant to stay home and care for her family who didn’t really have any real political opinions of her own and who followed their husband’s views. I also think that it was very bold for them to bring up topics such as class and race, and relate them to women&amp;#039;s gender roles. I can see why this could be appealing for some and scary for others. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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== Frances Ellen (Watkins) Harper, 1866 Woman’s Rights convention ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;quot;We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.&amp;quot;  Strong words that people still need to come terms with today.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I really enjoyed reading her speech.  I feel so much more for the black woman of the time because they were fighting a double fight: race and gender rights were needed.  Bringing up the &amp;quot;wrongs&amp;quot; done to the blacks by the whites was a powerful message, especially when she contrasted it to the &amp;quot;rights&amp;quot; that the &amp;quot;white women&amp;quot; keep takling about.  - christine&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I felt deeply sorry for Frances Harper,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; not only was she a woman but also a black widow who inherited the role of provider for four children, only one of whom she was the true mother to. She quickly points out that if she was a man, she would not have been violated in the same terms and would have been as seen as more equal before law. I think her message of saying giving women the right to vote would not cure all injustice against women, and race would be a big factor. She knows the terms of the country and understands that while big steps are needed the country would work a step at a time to achieve equality. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I also feel sorry for Frances Harper. It would be hard enough at this time to be either a woman or black, but to be both would be incredibly difficult. Even if someone didn&amp;#039;t hate you because you were black, they probably thought you were dumb because you were a woman. When we talked about her in class, I wasn&amp;#039;t sure that I agreed with her idea of gaining rights for black men before women. After reading this, I think I see her point. Even if women gained the right to vote, black women would still be excluded, either legally or illegally. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Shoe women of Lynn, MA, 1874 ==&lt;br /&gt;
In Shoemakers of Lynn, these women seemed very robust and seemed to want to do things that man does (such as chew tobacco and spit on the floor) and not be judged that it was not a “lady like” thing to do.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It’s interesting that she refers to women as slaves to men.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;What I thought stood out was when she spoke about women who are married, that they have no need for anything and have no idea the oppression that those who were not married had to face.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   -Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Americus provides an interesting counter to women’s suffrage that I hadn’t considered. She wrote that the day she takes the ballot “will bring with it a conviction that the judgment I rely on has failed me, and the arm upon which I lean, is powerless to protect (367).” She felt that women’s suffrage would ultimately question female judgment. Women relied on their husbands willingly, but suggesting that they needed to vote would also suggest that their husbands weren’t what they trusted them to be, and that perhaps women couldn’t trust themselves either if they were able to be so completely deceived.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In many ways, the women’s rights movement was elitist.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Wealthy women who had the leisure time to campaign for suffrage often asserted that they should vote to help counteract the votes of the working class. Working class women were less likely to participate in the women’s rights movement, therefore&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I thought Ella A. Little’s letter was pretty awesome. Her argument was that wealthy women did not really understand oppression and that working class women who had to “battle” to “earn their livelihood” were in more desperate need for the right to vote.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think it is really sad that this opinion is not often heard in the women’s rights movement.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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“Americus” was some character.  “Americus” described chewing tobacco and spitting it on the floor as a right. Snoring was also described as a right, because, I suppose, it was more acceptable for men to snore. I thought it interesting that they compared the fact of being a woman to the idea of slavery when as the NWSA they were not fighting for the right of African Amerian’s suffrage, they were first focused on the right for women to vote. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;It amused me that apparently as soon as women gained the right to vote that as a whole they’d be less timid and not afraid of “burglars nights” as well as chew and spit tobacco and snore&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (the latter two mentioned before). –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Amelia Barr, (novelist and married) 1896, Speaks out against female suffrage ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I still think that it is a little weird whenever I hear about a woman who did not want rights or did not see them as important to have. Maybe they couldn&amp;#039;t miss something they never had?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; In the document, she argued that if women were given rights they would have become tools, made irrational decisions, and be less likely to defend the nation. She also says that women are born graceful and soft and therefore could never do the work that rough men do. If I were a woman in the late Nineteenth Century, I would have just wanted to be seen as an equal to men and know that I would be treated fairly in court or receive an equal distribution of property or wealth from my deceased husband. I wouldn&amp;#039;t consider those two examples as doing &amp;quot;the work of the virile virtues of men.&amp;quot; - Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I found what Amelia Barr wrote very interesting.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She’s not against discontented women in the working class fighting for better wages but rather against women in the political realm&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  I think she’s saying women are too fickle to make political decisions like decisions of war and that law would be in danger in the hands of women.  Another point, I think she tried to make is that when a women steps out of the “domestic sphere” she put herself at risk for being criticized by a man (creating animosity) and Barr believed only women should criticize other women.  - Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I disagree with pretty much everything she has to say but I can totally see the women of her time agreeing with her. She promotes stereotypes which annoys me.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She asks if women get what they want and if they are allowed to work as men whether they will be happy. She asks if men&amp;#039;s work is less tiresome then women&amp;#039;s. Basically, isn&amp;#039;t work just work? These are definitely interesting questions. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I can understand why Amelia Barr would have followers, even though I totally disagree, as her arguments are written very well and she has arguments that attack women’s moral and sensible duties, such as their religion, their obligation to their families, and their femininity.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Specifically her writing about women’s ability to vote and work and that her desire for knowledge was unnecessary and will take away her femininity was interesting to me, and made me wonder&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; what she, or others like her, would think of the women of today? Would she see our accomplishments as really our failure as women? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anna Garlin Spencer, 1898, response to anti-suffrage attacks ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Spencer&amp;#039;s reasoning for why women should have the right to vote was unique. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She claimed that once the government began to get involved in matters dealing with &amp;quot;any form of educative, charitable or personally helpful work, it entered the area of distinctive feminine training and power.&amp;quot; Once the government entered that woman&amp;#039;s sphere, it became involved in women&amp;#039;s lives, which meant women had a say in what the government did, especially in that female sphere.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She made it seem like women had the right to be involved because of the government&amp;#039;s entrance into their lives. She also implied that without women&amp;#039;s suffrage, the government could not adequately function/make beneficial decisions in the woman&amp;#039;s sphere of influence. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 20th Century feminist, 1903, The Home ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In Charlotte Perkins Gilman&amp;#039;s piece, the reader gets the idea that she obviously thinks there is more to women than being housewives and mothers. She argues that women should be able to participate in society and not be stuck at home. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The idea of a &amp;quot;home-husband&amp;quot; was a funny concept. She said, and I agree, &amp;quot;Never was any such idiot on earth as this hypothetical home-husband. It was not in him to stay in such primitive restrictions. But he has been quite willing to leave his wife in that interestingly remote period.&amp;quot; Men are so adamant about keeping females inside the home but having the roles be reversed would be out of the question.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I think &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;in order for the women’s rights movement to proceed, people had to move beyond the idea that women were “naturally” moral and nurturing. I don’t think nineteenth-century Americans saw gender as fluid and dynamic, instead it was prescribed by God.  In order to change, they needed to learn to see it as less of a biological function, and more of a result of socialization. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Radicals such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman&amp;#039;&amp;#039; lead the way with ideas that women’s forced isolation in the home made them less capable for a public role rather than a natural lack of abilities.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Allison Luthern&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_13-14_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 13-14 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_13-14_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-11-24T01:42:10Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Eva Jones to Mary Jones, her mother-in-law, 1865 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 1862-1863 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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A Union Nurse, shows the experience of Louisa May Alcott as a nurse in the Union Hotel Hospital in Washington, D.C. One thing that stood out to me was Dorthea Dix’s call for women nurses. She was specific in that she was looking for “women between 30 and 50 years old, single, sober, hard-working, moral, and plain looking.” At first I thought that the age of 30 was a little old to be a cut off considering there must have been so many single, sober, hard-working, moral, and plain looking girls that were between 20 and 30 that would not have families to worry about so they would have the ability to become nurses. But then I realized that perhaps the act of being a young woman and working in close proximity with men would be considered immoral in and of itself. I am curious if they sent any women away because they were too good looking! –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought it was really interesting that Dorthea Dix wanted women between the age of 30-50. I agree with Erin that women probably had to be atleast 30 because it would be seen as inappropriate for a younger women to be working with men. I think that Dix extended the age to 50 because there were probably a lot of widows in their 40&amp;#039;s. I thought the requirement that the women be plain looking was funny, but I guess it makes sense. If the nurse was too good looking, the patients would probably be hitting on her all day long. On the other hand, if the patients had not been able to pay for prostitutes, they probably would be hitting on their nurses even if they were &amp;quot;plain looking&amp;quot;. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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Before reading about Louisa May Alcott, I never realized how hard it was for female nurses. Not only did they have to endure the casualties of war, taking care of gravely wounded soldiers, but they had to travel long distances to do their work. Louisa May Alcott originally lived in Concord but left to move to Georgetown to work as a nurse. At 30 years old, I wonder if she had other options she could have considered before becoming a nurse. Was becoming a nurse a last resort or was it something she had wanted to do forever? It was interesting to see how positive Alcott was, despite all the broken men she met through her job. She claimed to &amp;quot;find pleasure&amp;quot; in her job, working with the soldiers and &amp;quot;cheering these poor souls.&amp;quot; It amazed me that someone could be so positive in the midst of such sad circumstances. I feel like the fact that many nurses became sick and sometimes died is ironic because they would give up everything they had to work as nurses, yet they ended up suffering more than being rewarded for what they did. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Livermore, [Northern women on farm during war], 1890 -- Woloch and Major Problems readings. ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting that Mary Livermore&amp;#039;s observation of the women working in the fields at first bothered her.  Livermore compared women’s devotion to their family life and maintaining their farms to men’s devotion to the war when she said, “the women had enlisted in the war.”  This gave women some gender equality and  these responsibilities were accepted because it was in the name of  family, home, and country.  -Marsha &lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked the quote &amp;quot;the women had enlisted in the war&amp;quot;. While most women were not in battle or even serving as nurses, the Civil War changed their lives. They had to take on completely new responsiblities. I wonder if the women knew how much their lives would be changed by the war. I think they were caught up in the glory of the war. I bet if they knew how much their life would change, or in the instance of southern women that the war would be in their backyard, they would not have pushed the men to fight. I don&amp;#039;t think that they realized what they were getting themselves into at all. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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In Modern Problems, Mary Livermore spoke of the work of women.  She set a strong and emotional tone that women set forth in the war.  I think she was saying that the men in the war were given hope through the inspiring women and “ministering angels.”  She also compares women’s “relief societies” to regiments in the war.  -Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the end of Mary Livermore&amp;#039;s selection when she is comparing harvesting and domestic chores. She explains that harvesting is not any harder than &amp;quot;typical&amp;quot; women&amp;#039;s work and so females should be able/allowed to do it. She also wants men to know that women are serving the country in the fields doing the harvest in the same way men are in the war serving. The examples she gives help prove her statement that &amp;quot;women had enlisted for the war.&amp;quot; I feel she is also trying to make the point that men&amp;#039;s opinions about women working in the field does not matter because under the circumstances the women are the only ones able to do the work that is necessary in keeping up the estate or home. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== Louticia Jackson’s letter in 1863 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Despite the fact Louticia is having a problem with slaves &lt;br /&gt;
who are taking advantage of having no white man in&lt;br /&gt;
charge of them I still find her letter interesting. &lt;br /&gt;
She is clearly struggling with the fact that her &amp;quot;servants&amp;quot; &lt;br /&gt;
are not helping her. I did not like how when Willes the slave &lt;br /&gt;
yelled she took to her bed cause it &amp;quot;excited&amp;quot; her. Stop whining &lt;br /&gt;
and yell back. I know women would never do that but &lt;br /&gt;
I say desperate times call for desperate measures. LeAnn T.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I think this letter demonstrates how unprepared most southern women probably were when left to deal with the slaves on their own, especially male slaves. Since most of these women had been dominated by their husbands, it is not hard to understand that they would not be able to deal with a male slave who, essentially, was exhibiting the same type of behavior as their husbands had. When white masters left, did they give certain slaves more authority in making sure the plantation work continued on during their absence? Also, the relationship between Louticia and Willes seems interesting, especially the part about her taking care of him while he was sick (even bathing and rubbing him with her own hands). Was it just that she thought he was that valuable of a slave to her or was something else going on? Was it common for white women to take this much interest in their slaves?--Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Women all over the south, like Louticia, had problems with slaves when their husbands left because in the slaves eyes their masters left, women were subservient to their husbands (masters) and so were slaves; so who were they going to listen to? In this case I do not agree with how Willes treated Louticia. I agree with LeAnn yell back, stick up for yourself, times had changed with their husbands at war so do whatever it takes to survive. I also wonder why her son could not protect her? Did he not want to or did he fear a slave uprising if he tried to give out orders? His actions appeared to contradict how white men acted in the Confederate south. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Eva Jones to Mary Jones, her mother-in-law, 1865 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Evas letters to her mother in law were extremely poignant in their observations about Georgia during the reconstructive era. She seems to have been an ardent confederate which was surprising because it said that she had been educated in the north. I find it amazing that even someone who had been educated in northern society could still believe so firmly in the institution of slavery. Although the confederates lost the war it seems that the rules set forth by the union army during reconstruction and occupation made it almost impossible for them to succeed. So I can understand why her letters have such a tone of bitterness in them. I don&amp;#039;t blame her and her husband for relocating to the north until after reconstruction ended. I wonder if they faced any sort of discrimination there.-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Accounts of former slaves, 1865-1937 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== VA woman, recorded by abolitionist Laura Haviland in 1866 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Harriet Tubman, from her white female biographer, Sarah Bradford, 1886 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I can only imagine how much joy Harriet Tubman felt, as well as the joy she brought to the slaves during the Civil War. She was like the face of freedom for those slaves who had lost hope. During the Civil War when she worked for the Union army as a scout, she would show up in Southern territories with gun boats and the slaves probably saw this and were so ecstatic. I did find it interesting, however, that the slaves were at first terrified to see the gun boats coming. The best part about this story was when the slaves ran towards the gun boats, completely defying the slave drivers. The gunboats represented immediate emancipation for the slaves, and they knew then they were safe. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Clara Burdett, to notary in Union camp in KY, March 1865 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I found it interesting that a fugitive slave managed to file a complaint on her former master.  I would have imagined they wouldn&amp;#039;t even have taken that very seriously had she been a freed slave.  It is very courageous and heart-wrenching how she does try to retrieve her children and speak out against the master.  However, the treatment she describes isn&amp;#039;t very shocking sadly.  -  Christine&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Fanny Berry, in Weevils in the Wheat, 1937 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Tennessee Woman, 1929 [TN Nanny] ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Mary Anderson, NC ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I thought Mary Andersons account was good as a contrast to the lives of most southern slaves. It seemed that Mary was a house servant and was well taken care of by her masters, which is probably why she was inclined to work on her masters plantation even after she had been granted freedom. I thought it was especially interesting that Marys mistress addressed her slaves as children. This is probably representative of her behavior towards her slaves, which seemed to be very maternalistic. However if she looked upon her slaves as her children they might have been subject to better treatment. I found it interesting that these particular plantation owners sought out there former slaves after freedom, I wonder if they did this as a kindness or if they did it because they knew they could be paid less then white laborers. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To respond to Emma&amp;#039;s post, I feel like a lot of slave mistresses treated slaves as children.  They often look down on the slaves and think of them as inferior, just as if they were children.  As for the fact that many slave owners sought to keep their slaves, I feel it was out of habit and necessity.  They didn&amp;#039;t want anyone else to do the work and they still felt that it was the proper place for the black to serve them.  I really don&amp;#039;t feel it was out of kindness at all.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Katie Darling, in TX ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Sarah and Lucy Chase, Teaching the Freedmen, 1866-1868 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I enjoyed reading Sarah Chase and Lucy Chase’s letters because I did a lot of research on the topic of white northern women going south to teach newly freed blacks for my second paper and I was able to draw parallels between the Chase sisters and Mary Ames (who I focused on for my paper). The Chase sisters were from a wealthy family Massachusetts, and had been against slavery since before the war began, and went to Savannah after the war ended as teachers. In the letters, I can tell that becoming teachers in the south was not just about teaching the basics of reading and writing but it was about teaching new ways of life. These teachers thought that it was their responsibility to show the newly freed blacks how to be religious, self-sufficient, and how to be good people (by their standards). I have no doubt that the teachers had the best intentions, but I wonder if these rich white women were setting unattainable expectations and standards on black families and what this meant for them. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I thought these letters really showed the complexity of life in the South after the Civil War. Sarah Chase stated that she could hardly see the possibility of the North and South united because the South had an “intensely bitter” feeling “against anything Northern.” White people of the South resented all that Northern educators were doing for freed blacks since many white Southerners were uneducated themselves. However, Southern white people would rather not attend school at all than go to desegregated schools. Sarah Chase is an excellent example of the common racist feelings among abolitionists. She stated that her purpose was not to make black people equal to white people; she wished that white people always have a higher social standing. Even those trying to help the freed slaves were racist! Given the completely pervasive racism, it is not hard for me to realize how difficult life would be for black people after the Civil War. I can see how the Civil War really required a later Civil Rights Movement.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I agree that these letters really show the complexity of the South after the Civil War. These letters do a good job of showing just how bitter the South was over losing the war. I also think it was great the women like Sarah and Lucy went to the South to educate the freed slaves. If they hadn&amp;#039;t, I&amp;#039;m sure these freed slaves would have remained uneducated because I highly doubt that the southerners would have helped them. At least, most of them would not have helped. I think it is easy for us to look back at these letters and think &amp;quot;wow, even the women that taught these freed slaves were racist&amp;quot;. However, you have to remember that almost every white American, even abolitionists, considered themselves to be superior. For all of their lives, African-Americans had been held down and considered inferior. I do not think Lucy and Sarah would have considered themselves to be racist. I think that African-American inferiority is all they had known all of their lives. They probably thought that they were doing a great thing to help the freed slaves. I think the whole nation, even most Northerners, were pretty racist at this time following the Civil War.  -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, 1902 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ada Bacot, Confederate Nurse, 1862 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I cannot imagine working with wounded men some of them enemies. Ada says she is not sure that she can treat Yankee soldiers the same as Confederate soldiers. At first my reaction was what kind of person wouldn&amp;#039;t help out a wounded man he deserves treatment like everyone else. Then I thought about it. That soldier you are helping could have killed your father or brother or son. I would like to think I would treat everyone the same but I am not sure I could. I think Ada is a good person for at least making the effort to help humanity despite the fact they are the enemy. LeAnn T.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Maria Daly, 1862, Northerner in the South (New Orleans) ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Sarah Morgan, 1863, Teen diary ==&lt;br /&gt;
This diary entry reminded me of the Abigail Adams letters we read earlier in the course because I think both are severely out of context. The editors chose the most radical thing Abigail Adams and Sarah Morgan ever said and placed only those quotes in this book. I researched Sarah Morgan’s diary for the second paper in this class. I discovered that Sarah Morgan expressed support and desire for traditional gender roles of domestic female dependence much more often than her imaginations of fighting as a soldier. Later in the diary, she even renounced women expressing strong patriotic emotions. She said that her brothers’ political thought and action spoke for her.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This article really stuck out for a number of reasons.  First of all it seemed more like war time propaganda than a diary entry to me.  When I found out that it was a teen diary that changed things for me.  As Allison mentioned later in the diary she changed her views, which I don&amp;#039;t feel is that uncommon for someone her age to do.  Still, what kind of impact did the war have on someone like Sarah would was just entering womanhood?  Sarah seems to dislike the fact that she can not fight for her country, but at the same time she seems delighted to be able to help out in a womanly way.  -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Cornelia Hancock, Union Nurse, 1863 ==&lt;br /&gt;
In Cornelia&amp;#039;s letters I found it interesting how she exposed the care of soldiers for their fallen comrades, &amp;quot;Help my neighbor first he is worse.&amp;quot; (206). With the shortage of surgeons and even fewer nurses soldiers waited five days before a surgeon even passed by them or they gained something to eat besides tack. Cornelia glorified her work and said when she was sick she was treated like a &amp;quot;princess&amp;quot; and awarded a medal for her work. This makes me wonder if the romantic ideals of war stemmed from letters like hers? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Caroline Kirkland, 1863, defends Northern women’s support of Northern men ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting to read about a women who was defending the involvement Northern women had during the Civil War. She seemed very passionate about explaining the good they were doing and how they were helping in a positive way. Caroline Kirkland believed in her view so much as to say that if Southern women acted more like Northern women, the war may not have taken place.I thought that was a bold statement.   -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, January 1865 ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_13-14_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 13-14 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_13-14_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-11-24T01:27:36Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Mary Anderson, NC */&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;== Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 1862-1863 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A Union Nurse, shows the experience of Louisa May Alcott as a nurse in the Union Hotel Hospital in Washington, D.C. One thing that stood out to me was Dorthea Dix’s call for women nurses. She was specific in that she was looking for “women between 30 and 50 years old, single, sober, hard-working, moral, and plain looking.” At first I thought that the age of 30 was a little old to be a cut off considering there must have been so many single, sober, hard-working, moral, and plain looking girls that were between 20 and 30 that would not have families to worry about so they would have the ability to become nurses. But then I realized that perhaps the act of being a young woman and working in close proximity with men would be considered immoral in and of itself. I am curious if they sent any women away because they were too good looking! –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I also thought it was really interesting that Dorthea Dix wanted women between the age of 30-50. I agree with Erin that women probably had to be atleast 30 because it would be seen as inappropriate for a younger women to be working with men. I think that Dix extended the age to 50 because there were probably a lot of widows in their 40&amp;#039;s. I thought the requirement that the women be plain looking was funny, but I guess it makes sense. If the nurse was too good looking, the patients would probably be hitting on her all day long. On the other hand, if the patients had not been able to pay for prostitutes, they probably would be hitting on their nurses even if they were &amp;quot;plain looking&amp;quot;. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Before reading about Louisa May Alcott, I never realized how hard it was for female nurses. Not only did they have to endure the casualties of war, taking care of gravely wounded soldiers, but they had to travel long distances to do their work. Louisa May Alcott originally lived in Concord but left to move to Georgetown to work as a nurse. At 30 years old, I wonder if she had other options she could have considered before becoming a nurse. Was becoming a nurse a last resort or was it something she had wanted to do forever? It was interesting to see how positive Alcott was, despite all the broken men she met through her job. She claimed to &amp;quot;find pleasure&amp;quot; in her job, working with the soldiers and &amp;quot;cheering these poor souls.&amp;quot; It amazed me that someone could be so positive in the midst of such sad circumstances. I feel like the fact that many nurses became sick and sometimes died is ironic because they would give up everything they had to work as nurses, yet they ended up suffering more than being rewarded for what they did. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Mary Livermore, [Northern women on farm during war], 1890 -- Woloch and Major Problems readings. ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting that Mary Livermore&amp;#039;s observation of the women working in the fields at first bothered her.  Livermore compared women’s devotion to their family life and maintaining their farms to men’s devotion to the war when she said, “the women had enlisted in the war.”  This gave women some gender equality and  these responsibilities were accepted because it was in the name of  family, home, and country.  -Marsha &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I really liked the quote &amp;quot;the women had enlisted in the war&amp;quot;. While most women were not in battle or even serving as nurses, the Civil War changed their lives. They had to take on completely new responsiblities. I wonder if the women knew how much their lives would be changed by the war. I think they were caught up in the glory of the war. I bet if they knew how much their life would change, or in the instance of southern women that the war would be in their backyard, they would not have pushed the men to fight. I don&amp;#039;t think that they realized what they were getting themselves into at all. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In Modern Problems, Mary Livermore spoke of the work of women.  She set a strong and emotional tone that women set forth in the war.  I think she was saying that the men in the war were given hope through the inspiring women and “ministering angels.”  She also compares women’s “relief societies” to regiments in the war.  -Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I liked the end of Mary Livermore&amp;#039;s selection when she is comparing harvesting and domestic chores. She explains that harvesting is not any harder than &amp;quot;typical&amp;quot; women&amp;#039;s work and so females should be able/allowed to do it. She also wants men to know that women are serving the country in the fields doing the harvest in the same way men are in the war serving. The examples she gives help prove her statement that &amp;quot;women had enlisted for the war.&amp;quot; I feel she is also trying to make the point that men&amp;#039;s opinions about women working in the field does not matter because under the circumstances the women are the only ones able to do the work that is necessary in keeping up the estate or home. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Louticia Jackson’s letter in 1863 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Despite the fact Louticia is having a problem with slaves &lt;br /&gt;
who are taking advantage of having no white man in&lt;br /&gt;
charge of them I still find her letter interesting. &lt;br /&gt;
She is clearly struggling with the fact that her &amp;quot;servants&amp;quot; &lt;br /&gt;
are not helping her. I did not like how when Willes the slave &lt;br /&gt;
yelled she took to her bed cause it &amp;quot;excited&amp;quot; her. Stop whining &lt;br /&gt;
and yell back. I know women would never do that but &lt;br /&gt;
I say desperate times call for desperate measures. LeAnn T.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I think this letter demonstrates how unprepared most southern women probably were when left to deal with the slaves on their own, especially male slaves. Since most of these women had been dominated by their husbands, it is not hard to understand that they would not be able to deal with a male slave who, essentially, was exhibiting the same type of behavior as their husbands had. When white masters left, did they give certain slaves more authority in making sure the plantation work continued on during their absence? Also, the relationship between Louticia and Willes seems interesting, especially the part about her taking care of him while he was sick (even bathing and rubbing him with her own hands). Was it just that she thought he was that valuable of a slave to her or was something else going on? Was it common for white women to take this much interest in their slaves?--Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Women all over the south, like Louticia, had problems with slaves when their husbands left because in the slaves eyes their masters left, women were subservient to their husbands (masters) and so were slaves; so who were they going to listen to? In this case I do not agree with how Willes treated Louticia. I agree with LeAnn yell back, stick up for yourself, times had changed with their husbands at war so do whatever it takes to survive. I also wonder why her son could not protect her? Did he not want to or did he fear a slave uprising if he tried to give out orders? His actions appeared to contradict how white men acted in the Confederate south. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Eva Jones to Mary Jones, her mother-in-law, 1865 ==&lt;br /&gt;
 &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Accounts of former slaves, 1865-1937 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== VA woman, recorded by abolitionist Laura Haviland in 1866 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Harriet Tubman, from her white female biographer, Sarah Bradford, 1886 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I can only imagine how much joy Harriet Tubman felt, as well as the joy she brought to the slaves during the Civil War. She was like the face of freedom for those slaves who had lost hope. During the Civil War when she worked for the Union army as a scout, she would show up in Southern territories with gun boats and the slaves probably saw this and were so ecstatic. I did find it interesting, however, that the slaves were at first terrified to see the gun boats coming. The best part about this story was when the slaves ran towards the gun boats, completely defying the slave drivers. The gunboats represented immediate emancipation for the slaves, and they knew then they were safe. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Clara Burdett, to notary in Union camp in KY, March 1865 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Fanny Berry, in Weevils in the Wheat, 1937 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Tennessee Woman, 1929 [TN Nanny] ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Mary Anderson, NC ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I thought Mary Andersons account was good as a contrast to the lives of most southern slaves. It seemed that Mary was a house servant and was well taken care of by her masters, which is probably why she was inclined to work on her masters plantation even after she had been granted freedom. I thought it was especially interesting that Marys mistress addressed her slaves as children. This is probably representative of her behavior towards her slaves, which seemed to be very maternalistic. However if she looked upon her slaves as her children they might have been subject to better treatment. I found it interesting that these particular plantation owners sought out there former slaves after freedom, I wonder if they did this as a kindness or if they did it because they knew they could be paid less then white laborers. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Katie Darling, in TX ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Sarah and Lucy Chase, Teaching the Freedmen, 1866-1868 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I enjoyed reading Sarah Chase and Lucy Chase’s letters because I did a lot of research on the topic of white northern women going south to teach newly freed blacks for my second paper and I was able to draw parallels between the Chase sisters and Mary Ames (who I focused on for my paper). The Chase sisters were from a wealthy family Massachusetts, and had been against slavery since before the war began, and went to Savannah after the war ended as teachers. In the letters, I can tell that becoming teachers in the south was not just about teaching the basics of reading and writing but it was about teaching new ways of life. These teachers thought that it was their responsibility to show the newly freed blacks how to be religious, self-sufficient, and how to be good people (by their standards). I have no doubt that the teachers had the best intentions, but I wonder if these rich white women were setting unattainable expectations and standards on black families and what this meant for them. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I thought these letters really showed the complexity of life in the South after the Civil War. Sarah Chase stated that she could hardly see the possibility of the North and South united because the South had an “intensely bitter” feeling “against anything Northern.” White people of the South resented all that Northern educators were doing for freed blacks since many white Southerners were uneducated themselves. However, Southern white people would rather not attend school at all than go to desegregated schools. Sarah Chase is an excellent example of the common racist feelings among abolitionists. She stated that her purpose was not to make black people equal to white people; she wished that white people always have a higher social standing. Even those trying to help the freed slaves were racist! Given the completely pervasive racism, it is not hard for me to realize how difficult life would be for black people after the Civil War. I can see how the Civil War really required a later Civil Rights Movement.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I agree that these letters really show the complexity of the South after the Civil War. These letters do a good job of showing just how bitter the South was over losing the war. I also think it was great the women like Sarah and Lucy went to the South to educate the freed slaves. If they hadn&amp;#039;t, I&amp;#039;m sure these freed slaves would have remained uneducated because I highly doubt that the southerners would have helped them. At least, most of them would not have helped. I think it is easy for us to look back at these letters and think &amp;quot;wow, even the women that taught these freed slaves were racist&amp;quot;. However, you have to remember that almost every white American, even abolitionists, considered themselves to be superior. For all of their lives, African-Americans had been held down and considered inferior. I do not think Lucy and Sarah would have considered themselves to be racist. I think that African-American inferiority is all they had known all of their lives. They probably thought that they were doing a great thing to help the freed slaves. I think the whole nation, even most Northerners, were pretty racist at this time following the Civil War.  -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, 1902 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ada Bacot, Confederate Nurse, 1862 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I cannot imagine working with wounded men some of them enemies. Ada says she is not sure that she can treat Yankee soldiers the same as Confederate soldiers. At first my reaction was what kind of person wouldn&amp;#039;t help out a wounded man he deserves treatment like everyone else. Then I thought about it. That soldier you are helping could have killed your father or brother or son. I would like to think I would treat everyone the same but I am not sure I could. I think Ada is a good person for at least making the effort to help humanity despite the fact they are the enemy. LeAnn T.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Maria Daly, 1862, Northerner in the South (New Orleans) ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Sarah Morgan, 1863, Teen diary ==&lt;br /&gt;
This diary entry reminded me of the Abigail Adams letters we read earlier in the course because I think both are severely out of context. The editors chose the most radical thing Abigail Adams and Sarah Morgan ever said and placed only those quotes in this book. I researched Sarah Morgan’s diary for the second paper in this class. I discovered that Sarah Morgan expressed support and desire for traditional gender roles of domestic female dependence much more often than her imaginations of fighting as a soldier. Later in the diary, she even renounced women expressing strong patriotic emotions. She said that her brothers’ political thought and action spoke for her.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This article really stuck out for a number of reasons.  First of all it seemed more like war time propaganda than a diary entry to me.  When I found out that it was a teen diary that changed things for me.  As Allison mentioned later in the diary she changed her views, which I don&amp;#039;t feel is that uncommon for someone her age to do.  Still, what kind of impact did the war have on someone like Sarah would was just entering womanhood?  Sarah seems to dislike the fact that she can not fight for her country, but at the same time she seems delighted to be able to help out in a womanly way.  -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Cornelia Hancock, Union Nurse, 1863 ==&lt;br /&gt;
In Cornelia&amp;#039;s letters I found it interesting how she exposed the care of soldiers for their fallen comrades, &amp;quot;Help my neighbor first he is worse.&amp;quot; (206). With the shortage of surgeons and even fewer nurses soldiers waited five days before a surgeon even passed by them or they gained something to eat besides tack. Cornelia glorified her work and said when she was sick she was treated like a &amp;quot;princess&amp;quot; and awarded a medal for her work. This makes me wonder if the romantic ideals of war stemmed from letters like hers? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Caroline Kirkland, 1863, defends Northern women’s support of Northern men ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting to read about a women who was defending the involvement Northern women had during the Civil War. She seemed very passionate about explaining the good they were doing and how they were helping in a positive way. Caroline Kirkland believed in her view so much as to say that if Southern women acted more like Northern women, the war may not have taken place.I thought that was a bold statement.   -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, January 1865 ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_12_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 12 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_12_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-11-12T06:11:29Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Lucy Stone (and Henry Blackwell)’s Marriage Protest, 1855 */&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;== Comparative source questions ==&lt;br /&gt;
After reading all the different entries in the book, I&amp;#039;ve noticed that all the women who were involved in reform movements were 100% dedicated to their cause. There were very few who were semi-dedicated, or who only partially cared. These women were involved for a reason, and they weren&amp;#039;t going to stop, no matter who or what tried to deter them. Their dedication is what kept the reform movement going. But the ironic thing is that while all these women were putting in so much effort into these movements, none of it was out of selfish motives (at least not what we can see). I think that is what made the reform movement as great as it was, women helping one another. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Advocate of Moral Reform, 1838 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In The Advocate of Moral Reform I found it interesting that moral reformers were against “the hazard of elopement”. They believed that elopement was an escape from parental authority and “the first step to ruin”. In the story, the girl elopes and is led into prostitution, and is then saved. I am curious how often this type of thing actually happened. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was strange that when the girl was found in the brothel by the person from her home town, that he himself did not get her out of the place himself, instead he went to the &amp;quot;Moral Reform Society&amp;quot; and asked them to get her out.-Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that the moral reformers brought the circus into the mix. I can definitely see how they’d take issue with it, but I think they may’ve been overreacting just a tad. The young man who knew the girl, “having heard of the performances of a wonderful animal at the Circus, was induced for once to visit that school of immorality and debauchery (234).” They actually suggest that going to the circus leads to the whorehouse. The young man apparently only went because of his exposure to those shady circus folk. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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Ok to be fair to the story the circus is a scary place! You never know what kind of shady business is going on there! It did seem kind of odd though that they would throw in the circus aspect of the story. I guess the author had a bad experience with the circus? This piece was slightly amusing/pathetic it reminded me of the story of Charlotte (was that her name?) the other very very silly girl who ran off with someone and was abandoned and then died when her father came and forgave her. Why are these girls so silly? I hope we have evolved!-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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For the topic, I found this piece almost humorous.  The writer seems to be putting forth a conspiracy theory that the man intentionally lured his very innocent victim into the state of needing to become a prostitute to pay for her bills.   This article portrays a young country girl, innocent in the ways of the world, as a victim to the evils of both male immorality (sex) and the city.  Exaggerated and a little over the top, I am sure it received plenty of attention, but also very pointedly displaying the evils of sex and prostitution.-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Maria Stewart, 1831, “O, Ye Daughters of Africa, Awake!” in the Liberator. ==&lt;br /&gt;
Maria Stewart seems out of her time.  She is strong and vigile with her words.  She recognizes her part in the constitution by saying that all men are free and equal.  I think she makes a loud and vigilant statement when she says principles makes the man not the color of the skin.  I thought it was interesting also when she wrote that even though many think blacks are an inferior race that God does not look at them  that way.  Maria Stewart had professed her faith to God.  I think she was expressing that blacks allegiance was to their country and faith to God -not their masters. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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The writing of Maria W. Stewart reminded me of Martin Luther King Jr. She wrote: “Far be it from me to recommend to you either to kill, burn, or destroy. But I would strongly recommend to you to improve your talents; let not one lie buried in the earth. Show forth your powers of the mind...” Stewart and King both promoted non-violent protest and spoke of equality in religious terms.   -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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As I read this passage, Maria Stewart said many things that stood out to me as brave, but also showed her dedication to the cause. She reaches out to people with the intent to empower them. She says, &amp;quot;Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings.&amp;quot; (P. 236) To the people she specifically talks to, she gives them little chance for excuses as to why they do not stand up and support reform and stand up for their rights. It was interesting how Maria Stewart referred to God in everything she said. She believed her work was for God and believed, with that idea, that she (and other AFrican Americans) could achieve anything. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Letter to Liberator from Andover Female Antislavery Society, 1836 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Referring to the meetings of the Female Antislavery Society, this woman was stressing the importance of a woman&amp;#039;s role in reform.  It was women&amp;#039;s Godly duty to reform those in the south, who believed in slavery.  Using such words as &amp;quot;scourged sisters&amp;quot; at the South, meaning black women are our sisters and are being tortured by the south.  The south must be corrected for their wrong doings.  Black women are being opressed and we must reform the south to stop the oppression.  She saw it as a degradation of women or what she called &amp;quot;darkness.&amp;quot;  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Marsha in that women stressed their importance in reform. They saw it as their &amp;quot;Christian duty&amp;quot; to help their enslaved sisters. According to these antislavery women, they were justified in condemning slavery because it &amp;quot;robbed women in slavery of virtue&amp;quot;. It is interesting that these antislavery women who had their ideals of what it meant to be women believed that slave women had those same ideals. I wonder how southern white women felt about this. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it is always so interesting when people interpret the bible and use it for whatever point they was to make or argue. In this case with the letter, I liked the way the lady wanted to explain how God viewed women-that they had a duty but also that they should not be slaves. I also liked the statement that said it &amp;quot;disregards the relation of husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child-shuts out the intellect the light of knowledge-whelms hope in despair and ruins the soul.&amp;quot; The letter had a lot of good points to make.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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When I read this piece, I was really impressed by the ammount of imagery used. It was very well written, and made to grab the readers attention and convince them that slavery is indeed, a very vile practice. This is definately propaganda, catering to the northern white middle class women. It was made to be really moving and convincing, to draw more women into the cause of anti-slavery, and it seems like a good enough piece of work to have been able to do the job. Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Grimke’s response to the Mass Clergy, 1837 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I was really impressed by the choice of words and imagery Grimke uses in her response to the Mass Clergy. Just to imagine how learned and politically savvy this woman must have been is not much of a feat. I can see this woman being someone who could run verbal circles around almost anyone. And, it is also interssting that she intreperts the bible as saying that men and women were created equal. I am curious to know if saying that men and women were created equal under god was a very different thing, or if that was a rather normal statement to make at the time? Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Kristina about the way Sarah Grimke spoke to the clergy. She was not afraid to ask the hard questions, the ones she knew she was justified in asking, such s &amp;quot;how monstrous is the doctrine that woman is to be dependent on man? Where in all the sacred scriptures is this taught?&amp;quot; Grimke speaks out on eveyrthing she finds wrong with the clergy in relation to women&amp;#039;s rights. I think I mostly enjoyed her last sentence, &amp;quot;But no where does Godsay that he made any disntinction between us as moral and intelligent beings.&amp;quot; I feel like that was almost a slap in the face to the clergy, because in one sentence, she was able to assert female intelligence over that of men, and it came across as an insult. I was glad to see someone could be courageous and speak up, without being afraid. Grimke did her research, and had evidence to back up what she was arguing. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, 1848 (written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I don’t really understand why women would be willing to put forth their rights and equality unanimously except for voting rights. If women were kept out of political life because they were considered unsuited for it intellectually and emotionally, but the women and men at Seneca Falls were arguing the opposite, why not just go for the gold? The Declaration of Sentiments is threatening already, what difference would one more assertion make. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t really understand why the Declaration of Sentiments began with the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. I know the women were trying to establish that they were entitled to the freedoms men did as a result of the Declaration of Independence, but I feel like by repeating it, the women are not making any progress. However, I do feel that some of the statements made in the Declaration of Sentiments were very strong. When the women write, &amp;quot;He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.&amp;quot; (P. 242) The phrase &amp;quot;civilly dead&amp;quot; just seems like a strong way of describing the lack of rights for women, but that probably describes the women&amp;#039;s feelings almost exactly on the matter. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lucy Stone (and Henry Blackwell)’s Marriage Protest, 1855 ==&lt;br /&gt;
The marriage protest I compared to a modern day pre-nuptial agreement. With Lucy having this agreement read at her wedding she took a strong stance for women&amp;#039;s rights as did her husband and those who attended the wedding. I think her fight against William Blackstone&amp;#039;s words, &amp;quot;the existence of the wife is suspended during marriage.&amp;quot; spoke louder than any sewing circle. Lucy wanted an equal partnership in her marriage and with this agreement believed she would get it, but I question how was the protest enforced? Did her husband truly agree to all six points in the protest? If so, I strongly commend him for standing by his wife in her fight for women&amp;#039;s rights and hope he set a further example for marriages in the 1850s. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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The introduction to this piece noted that Lucy Stone endured much ridicule and persecution for her protest, but it does not mention how others regarded Henry Blackwell, Lucy’s husband. I would think that those opposed to the protest would also ridicule Blackwell for his perceived inability to keep Lucy submissive to him. I think Blackwell’s actions were very brave and liberal-thinking because he gave society a large opportunity to question his masculinity.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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This protest was very interesting.  That the husband would sign this very rebellious statement during a time when the man is viewed as the head of the household seemed very liberal of him.  My question would be was how did this protest stand legally? Many of the portions of this protest include legal issues such as guardianship over children, laws over wills, property, and the rejection of feme covert.  Did this really do anything outside of the house?-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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wow! This was really cool! I wonder if she was one of the first women to keep her own name when she got married. I also wonder if this agreement had any standing in a court of law, but regardless it was a very compelling act of rebellion against the legal system in regards to married womens rights. I know the story mentioned that Lucy received ridicule for her actions but I would find it hard to believe that her husband didn&amp;#039;t receive that and much worse from other men. Both her and her husbands actions are extremely commendable and I hope that it inspired other women of that time to demand the same sort of rights in their own marriages.---Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sojourner Truth (Isabella Van Wagener), 1851 (Ohio Convention). ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Isablle Graham and Society for Relief of Poor Widows, 1806 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting how much Isabella Graham invoked the idea that, as Christian women, it was both their moral and religious duty to fight against slavery, which they saw as a sin. She considers them &amp;quot;blessed&amp;quot;, as well as &amp;quot;Good Samaritans&amp;quot;. These religious sentiments are echoed in the next document, the minutes of the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention in 1837, which starts off with a reading of the Scripture and offering of prayer, and then goes on to state the necessity of &amp;quot;treading&amp;quot; in the &amp;quot;Redeemer&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; steps and preserving &amp;quot;God&amp;#039;s gift of freedom.&amp;quot; I didn&amp;#039;t realize how much of a role religion played in the Abolition movement, or perhaps how much it was expressed. I also thought it was interesting how Isabella Graham seemed to encourage the women in their &amp;quot;duties&amp;quot;, portraying the widows as less fortunate and in need of assistance (&amp;quot;the approach of winter is as the approach of death.&amp;quot;) -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, 1837 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Compared to what I learned about the Constitutional Conventions and early Congress in my Revolution class, a lot of things seemed to be accomplished in this convention.  They had 8 revolutions passed in the first day, in fact, everything seemed to pass. However, this could simply be the fact that so many like-minded individuals chose to meet at this group whereas elected/appointed officials who may not share the same view were in the Constitutional Conventions or Congress, this leads to debate. Just wondering, about how long would these conventions last? –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== American Female Reform Society Warns Mothers of “Solitary Vice”, 1839 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== 1848, Elizabeth McClintock and Elizabeth Cady Stanton defend the Declaration of Sentiments and the 1848 convention ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== 1852, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book ==&lt;br /&gt;
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While this passage consisted of only a paragraph, I found it interesting how Mrs. Hale took a stance on voting. She did not think women needed the right to vote when they could influence the men in their lives, yet did the men not have the final say so in the home? I think this passage took a step backwards for the women&amp;#039;s movement, while yes women could attempt to influence men did they really? This was not like the Native Americans in which women could keep food from men if things did not go their way. I think this passage serves to represent women as subservient  to their husbands and or sons. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Do you think this passage is related to any of the reform movements, such as prohibition or prostitution?  Perhaps many women at the time felt that if they focused to much on women&amp;#039;s suffrage, the issues that were important to them would be left behind.  Do you think that some women believed in women&amp;#039;s suffrage, but did not think it was worth fighting for because it would hinder other important issues?  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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== Julie Roy Jeffrey, “Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement,” in the Introduction to &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Anti-slavery Movement&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1998. ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked this essay by Julie Roy Jeffrey. I liked how she talked about the plain, average woman being a big part of the abolition movement. William Lloyd Garrison Jr said that the &amp;quot;leaders would have been powerless&amp;quot; without their help. Jeffrey talks about individual movements that were created after the national antislavery effort was ended in the mid Nineteenth century. She also mentioned how the involvement in this effort put women outside their sphere like we talked about in class. The end of the essay mentions several women who were a part of this movement that I think was important to include.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I also really liked this essay. One part that especially interests me is when Julie Roy Jeffrey discussed the ways in which the abolitionist movement affected women&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;self-perception and self-image&amp;quot;. She talks about how the movement instilled in women the necessity of learning to &amp;quot;reason and to argue&amp;quot;, which completely goes against society&amp;#039;s expectation that women be submissive and passive. I also feel like in many ways the movement, along with other reform and moral movements of the period, may have given some women greater confidence in themselves and their abilities, as well as more assurance and self-assertiveness. On the other hand, some women could have felt as Sarah Ernst did, when she stated that the &amp;quot;sleepless nights and anxious distressed days&amp;quot; she was spending in commitments to the abolitionist movement were &amp;quot;not calculated to give a healthy constitution&amp;quot; to her newborn baby. I wonder how women such as Sarah balanced their roles as mothers and wives with their duties and commitments to the various movements? -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Nancy Isenberg’s “Women’s Rights and the Politics of Church and State in Antebellum America,” (1998) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Shirley Yee, “Free Black Women in the Abolitionist Movement,” in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, (1992). ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_12_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 12 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_12_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-11-12T06:03:16Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* The Advocate of Moral Reform, 1838 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Comparative source questions ==&lt;br /&gt;
After reading all the different entries in the book, I&amp;#039;ve noticed that all the women who were involved in reform movements were 100% dedicated to their cause. There were very few who were semi-dedicated, or who only partially cared. These women were involved for a reason, and they weren&amp;#039;t going to stop, no matter who or what tried to deter them. Their dedication is what kept the reform movement going. But the ironic thing is that while all these women were putting in so much effort into these movements, none of it was out of selfish motives (at least not what we can see). I think that is what made the reform movement as great as it was, women helping one another. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Advocate of Moral Reform, 1838 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In The Advocate of Moral Reform I found it interesting that moral reformers were against “the hazard of elopement”. They believed that elopement was an escape from parental authority and “the first step to ruin”. In the story, the girl elopes and is led into prostitution, and is then saved. I am curious how often this type of thing actually happened. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was strange that when the girl was found in the brothel by the person from her home town, that he himself did not get her out of the place himself, instead he went to the &amp;quot;Moral Reform Society&amp;quot; and asked them to get her out.-Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that the moral reformers brought the circus into the mix. I can definitely see how they’d take issue with it, but I think they may’ve been overreacting just a tad. The young man who knew the girl, “having heard of the performances of a wonderful animal at the Circus, was induced for once to visit that school of immorality and debauchery (234).” They actually suggest that going to the circus leads to the whorehouse. The young man apparently only went because of his exposure to those shady circus folk. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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Ok to be fair to the story the circus is a scary place! You never know what kind of shady business is going on there! It did seem kind of odd though that they would throw in the circus aspect of the story. I guess the author had a bad experience with the circus? This piece was slightly amusing/pathetic it reminded me of the story of Charlotte (was that her name?) the other very very silly girl who ran off with someone and was abandoned and then died when her father came and forgave her. Why are these girls so silly? I hope we have evolved!-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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For the topic, I found this piece almost humorous.  The writer seems to be putting forth a conspiracy theory that the man intentionally lured his very innocent victim into the state of needing to become a prostitute to pay for her bills.   This article portrays a young country girl, innocent in the ways of the world, as a victim to the evils of both male immorality (sex) and the city.  Exaggerated and a little over the top, I am sure it received plenty of attention, but also very pointedly displaying the evils of sex and prostitution.-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Maria Stewart, 1831, “O, Ye Daughters of Africa, Awake!” in the Liberator. ==&lt;br /&gt;
Maria Stewart seems out of her time.  She is strong and vigile with her words.  She recognizes her part in the constitution by saying that all men are free and equal.  I think she makes a loud and vigilant statement when she says principles makes the man not the color of the skin.  I thought it was interesting also when she wrote that even though many think blacks are an inferior race that God does not look at them  that way.  Maria Stewart had professed her faith to God.  I think she was expressing that blacks allegiance was to their country and faith to God -not their masters. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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The writing of Maria W. Stewart reminded me of Martin Luther King Jr. She wrote: “Far be it from me to recommend to you either to kill, burn, or destroy. But I would strongly recommend to you to improve your talents; let not one lie buried in the earth. Show forth your powers of the mind...” Stewart and King both promoted non-violent protest and spoke of equality in religious terms.   -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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As I read this passage, Maria Stewart said many things that stood out to me as brave, but also showed her dedication to the cause. She reaches out to people with the intent to empower them. She says, &amp;quot;Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings.&amp;quot; (P. 236) To the people she specifically talks to, she gives them little chance for excuses as to why they do not stand up and support reform and stand up for their rights. It was interesting how Maria Stewart referred to God in everything she said. She believed her work was for God and believed, with that idea, that she (and other AFrican Americans) could achieve anything. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Letter to Liberator from Andover Female Antislavery Society, 1836 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Referring to the meetings of the Female Antislavery Society, this woman was stressing the importance of a woman&amp;#039;s role in reform.  It was women&amp;#039;s Godly duty to reform those in the south, who believed in slavery.  Using such words as &amp;quot;scourged sisters&amp;quot; at the South, meaning black women are our sisters and are being tortured by the south.  The south must be corrected for their wrong doings.  Black women are being opressed and we must reform the south to stop the oppression.  She saw it as a degradation of women or what she called &amp;quot;darkness.&amp;quot;  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Marsha in that women stressed their importance in reform. They saw it as their &amp;quot;Christian duty&amp;quot; to help their enslaved sisters. According to these antislavery women, they were justified in condemning slavery because it &amp;quot;robbed women in slavery of virtue&amp;quot;. It is interesting that these antislavery women who had their ideals of what it meant to be women believed that slave women had those same ideals. I wonder how southern white women felt about this. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it is always so interesting when people interpret the bible and use it for whatever point they was to make or argue. In this case with the letter, I liked the way the lady wanted to explain how God viewed women-that they had a duty but also that they should not be slaves. I also liked the statement that said it &amp;quot;disregards the relation of husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child-shuts out the intellect the light of knowledge-whelms hope in despair and ruins the soul.&amp;quot; The letter had a lot of good points to make.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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When I read this piece, I was really impressed by the ammount of imagery used. It was very well written, and made to grab the readers attention and convince them that slavery is indeed, a very vile practice. This is definately propaganda, catering to the northern white middle class women. It was made to be really moving and convincing, to draw more women into the cause of anti-slavery, and it seems like a good enough piece of work to have been able to do the job. Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Grimke’s response to the Mass Clergy, 1837 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I was really impressed by the choice of words and imagery Grimke uses in her response to the Mass Clergy. Just to imagine how learned and politically savvy this woman must have been is not much of a feat. I can see this woman being someone who could run verbal circles around almost anyone. And, it is also interssting that she intreperts the bible as saying that men and women were created equal. I am curious to know if saying that men and women were created equal under god was a very different thing, or if that was a rather normal statement to make at the time? Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Kristina about the way Sarah Grimke spoke to the clergy. She was not afraid to ask the hard questions, the ones she knew she was justified in asking, such s &amp;quot;how monstrous is the doctrine that woman is to be dependent on man? Where in all the sacred scriptures is this taught?&amp;quot; Grimke speaks out on eveyrthing she finds wrong with the clergy in relation to women&amp;#039;s rights. I think I mostly enjoyed her last sentence, &amp;quot;But no where does Godsay that he made any disntinction between us as moral and intelligent beings.&amp;quot; I feel like that was almost a slap in the face to the clergy, because in one sentence, she was able to assert female intelligence over that of men, and it came across as an insult. I was glad to see someone could be courageous and speak up, without being afraid. Grimke did her research, and had evidence to back up what she was arguing. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, 1848 (written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I don’t really understand why women would be willing to put forth their rights and equality unanimously except for voting rights. If women were kept out of political life because they were considered unsuited for it intellectually and emotionally, but the women and men at Seneca Falls were arguing the opposite, why not just go for the gold? The Declaration of Sentiments is threatening already, what difference would one more assertion make. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I don&amp;#039;t really understand why the Declaration of Sentiments began with the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. I know the women were trying to establish that they were entitled to the freedoms men did as a result of the Declaration of Independence, but I feel like by repeating it, the women are not making any progress. However, I do feel that some of the statements made in the Declaration of Sentiments were very strong. When the women write, &amp;quot;He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.&amp;quot; (P. 242) The phrase &amp;quot;civilly dead&amp;quot; just seems like a strong way of describing the lack of rights for women, but that probably describes the women&amp;#039;s feelings almost exactly on the matter. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lucy Stone (and Henry Blackwell)’s Marriage Protest, 1855 ==&lt;br /&gt;
The marriage protest I compared to a modern day pre-nuptial agreement. With Lucy having this agreement read at her wedding she took a strong stance for women&amp;#039;s rights as did her husband and those who attended the wedding. I think her fight against William Blackstone&amp;#039;s words, &amp;quot;the existence of the wife is suspended during marriage.&amp;quot; spoke louder than any sewing circle. Lucy wanted an equal partnership in her marriage and with this agreement believed she would get it, but I question how was the protest enforced? Did her husband truly agree to all six points in the protest? If so, I strongly commend him for standing by his wife in her fight for women&amp;#039;s rights and hope he set a further example for marriages in the 1850s. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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The introduction to this piece noted that Lucy Stone endured much ridicule and persecution for her protest, but it does not mention how others regarded Henry Blackwell, Lucy’s husband. I would think that those opposed to the protest would also ridicule Blackwell for his perceived inability to keep Lucy submissive to him. I think Blackwell’s actions were very brave and liberal-thinking because he gave society a large opportunity to question his masculinity.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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This protest was very interesting.  That the husband would sign this very rebellious statement during a time when the man is viewed as the head of the household seemed very liberal of him.  My question would be was how did this protest stand legally? Many of the portions of this protest include legal issues such as guardianship over children, laws over wills, property, and the rejection of feme covert.  Did this really do anything outside of the house?-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sojourner Truth (Isabella Van Wagener), 1851 (Ohio Convention). ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Isablle Graham and Society for Relief of Poor Widows, 1806 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting how much Isabella Graham invoked the idea that, as Christian women, it was both their moral and religious duty to fight against slavery, which they saw as a sin. She considers them &amp;quot;blessed&amp;quot;, as well as &amp;quot;Good Samaritans&amp;quot;. These religious sentiments are echoed in the next document, the minutes of the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention in 1837, which starts off with a reading of the Scripture and offering of prayer, and then goes on to state the necessity of &amp;quot;treading&amp;quot; in the &amp;quot;Redeemer&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; steps and preserving &amp;quot;God&amp;#039;s gift of freedom.&amp;quot; I didn&amp;#039;t realize how much of a role religion played in the Abolition movement, or perhaps how much it was expressed. I also thought it was interesting how Isabella Graham seemed to encourage the women in their &amp;quot;duties&amp;quot;, portraying the widows as less fortunate and in need of assistance (&amp;quot;the approach of winter is as the approach of death.&amp;quot;) -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, 1837 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Compared to what I learned about the Constitutional Conventions and early Congress in my Revolution class, a lot of things seemed to be accomplished in this convention.  They had 8 revolutions passed in the first day, in fact, everything seemed to pass. However, this could simply be the fact that so many like-minded individuals chose to meet at this group whereas elected/appointed officials who may not share the same view were in the Constitutional Conventions or Congress, this leads to debate. Just wondering, about how long would these conventions last? –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== American Female Reform Society Warns Mothers of “Solitary Vice”, 1839 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== 1848, Elizabeth McClintock and Elizabeth Cady Stanton defend the Declaration of Sentiments and the 1848 convention ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== 1852, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book ==&lt;br /&gt;
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While this passage consisted of only a paragraph, I found it interesting how Mrs. Hale took a stance on voting. She did not think women needed the right to vote when they could influence the men in their lives, yet did the men not have the final say so in the home? I think this passage took a step backwards for the women&amp;#039;s movement, while yes women could attempt to influence men did they really? This was not like the Native Americans in which women could keep food from men if things did not go their way. I think this passage serves to represent women as subservient  to their husbands and or sons. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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Do you think this passage is related to any of the reform movements, such as prohibition or prostitution?  Perhaps many women at the time felt that if they focused to much on women&amp;#039;s suffrage, the issues that were important to them would be left behind.  Do you think that some women believed in women&amp;#039;s suffrage, but did not think it was worth fighting for because it would hinder other important issues?  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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== Julie Roy Jeffrey, “Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement,” in the Introduction to &amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Anti-slavery Movement&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1998. ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked this essay by Julie Roy Jeffrey. I liked how she talked about the plain, average woman being a big part of the abolition movement. William Lloyd Garrison Jr said that the &amp;quot;leaders would have been powerless&amp;quot; without their help. Jeffrey talks about individual movements that were created after the national antislavery effort was ended in the mid Nineteenth century. She also mentioned how the involvement in this effort put women outside their sphere like we talked about in class. The end of the essay mentions several women who were a part of this movement that I think was important to include.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I also really liked this essay. One part that especially interests me is when Julie Roy Jeffrey discussed the ways in which the abolitionist movement affected women&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;self-perception and self-image&amp;quot;. She talks about how the movement instilled in women the necessity of learning to &amp;quot;reason and to argue&amp;quot;, which completely goes against society&amp;#039;s expectation that women be submissive and passive. I also feel like in many ways the movement, along with other reform and moral movements of the period, may have given some women greater confidence in themselves and their abilities, as well as more assurance and self-assertiveness. On the other hand, some women could have felt as Sarah Ernst did, when she stated that the &amp;quot;sleepless nights and anxious distressed days&amp;quot; she was spending in commitments to the abolitionist movement were &amp;quot;not calculated to give a healthy constitution&amp;quot; to her newborn baby. I wonder how women such as Sarah balanced their roles as mothers and wives with their duties and commitments to the various movements? -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Nancy Isenberg’s “Women’s Rights and the Politics of Church and State in Antebellum America,” (1998) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Shirley Yee, “Free Black Women in the Abolitionist Movement,” in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, (1992). ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_11_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 11 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_11_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-11-05T18:08:27Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Xin Jin&amp;#039;s Contract, 1886 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Mary Anne Sadlier&amp;#039;s Bessy Conway ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it really interesting that Bessy, upon leaving Ireland to come to America, said that she was planning on returning to her family in a few years. Was it common for men and women who left Ireland to plan on returning one day? Also, I thought it was cool that Bessy was able to return home and help her family, it seems very ideal, like this is what the typical Irish immigrant woman would strive to do, leave home on her own (getting her burden off her family) and making enough money to turn around and help support her family. So what was Mary Anne Sadlier&amp;#039;s goal in writing this story?  -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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It was very obvious that Bessy loved Ireland. I also wonder how many Irish immigrants that wanted to return home one day actually did. The trip to America had to be an extremely long trip. For her to come to America, work hard in difficult circumstances, and then make the trip back to Ireland took a lot of strength and courage. I just wonder how often situations like this actually happened. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Bessy Conway was one of the lucky ones because she was able to go and had a job lined up for her with a place to live.  She was one of those who embraced the myth of so much opportunity in a new world.  She was a hard worker and expected the same of others around her (especially the other servants in the house.)-Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the mixed chapters we read of Bessy&amp;#039;s story put a sense of reality on the true plight of young Irish women and men. From the early chapters discussing her families struggles and her earnestness to leave her home to help her family made me wonder if all young immigrants cared the same for Ireland and their families as Bessy? Chapters 6 and 15 stood out the most to me with their discussion of religion and how it was so important eventually leading to Bessy&amp;#039;s dismissal was this normal in America? Did Americans fear religious takeover from the Irish immigrants? -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the pictures of the starving people was awful and it was hard to read the chapter about Bessy&amp;#039;s starving family. They kept their faith in God and kept saying that God would save them. I cannot imagine having enough food. Bessy was definitely a very lucky girl that she had a good job and earned quite a bit of money. It think it is interesting that Mary Anne Sadlier made Bessy out to be a hard worker which and implied that is why she was successful. Bessy just had a better opportunity then most. The author made the other servant out to be lazy which is why they ultimately were lost to poverty.  - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Jannicke Saehle, 1847, Norwegian immigrant’s letters ==&lt;br /&gt;
I enjoyed this piece, it provided a lot of information about immigrants (though certainly not the majority of the poor Irish who suffered an awful journey across the Atlantic.) Jannicke Saehle obviously has some money as she was able to site see once arriving in America. I found her statement about sea sickness, “And after five minutes my turn came, also, to contribute my share to the Atlantic Ocean,” quite humorous. &lt;br /&gt;
I also found it interesting her mentioning the abundance of food in America and that Americans tended to toss the extra to swine while people in her homeland starved. I certainly hope Johannes, her brother to whom she was writing, was not one of the starving people for I would hate to hear of all the waste if I were to be one of the starving poor. &lt;br /&gt;
One question, though, how common were the museums that she described with wild animals?  –Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn&amp;#039;t realize that museuems of the kind she was describing existed at this time period in New York...I wonder if she was mentioning the Museum of Natural History. I have been there but who is the soldier with no head? I don&amp;#039;t remember seeing that last time I went to any history museums. Her story was nice to read, because unlike so many others she truly seems to be living a better life in America. Even her passage over seemed to be blessed with good fortune. the tone of Jannickes story was happy and upbeat making her seem like the type of person who would find the silver lining in ever episode. However I wonder if she was trying to play things up a bit to comfort her family that maybe was worried about her well being?--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== William Sanger, New York Prostitutes, 1858 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I found it interesting that Sanger sympathizes with the prostitutes in his study and that he blamed fathers, husbands, and families for not doing their job.  The immorality is from the failures of these figures in women&amp;#039;s lives.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found Dr. Sanger&amp;#039;s belief that the women he interviewed were victims of their environment (and not necessarily prostitutes because of a moral flaw in character, etc.) very interesting. I think it could be applied in geographical concepts and ideas, too- for example, the belief in &amp;quot;environmental determinism&amp;quot; (or the idea that your environment and surroundings have a major impact on who you are as a person) versus &amp;quot;environmental possibilism&amp;quot;, where your environment can place some limits on you, but you are essentially responsible for who you are and what you do. I also found it interesting that, in discussing the reasons why some of the women would have cited &amp;quot;Inclination&amp;quot; as a reason for their becoming a prostitute, Dr. Sanger also mentioned and acknowledged female desires. In most of what we have discussed in class, we have talked about how women were expected to be &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;chaste&amp;quot;, while only men could actually have sexual desires and emotions. Dr. Sanger states, &amp;quot;The force of desire can be neither denied nor disputed, but still in the bosoms of most females that force exists in a slumbering state until aroused by some outside influences.&amp;quot; Thus, he still, in many ways, is reinforcing the belief that women (while acknowledging that they might actually have &amp;quot;desires&amp;quot;- shocking!)should keep these repressed and private. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that it is very interesting that Sanger blamed husbands, fathers, and the environment for these women becoming prostitutes. I think that a lot of that comes from the fact that women were expected to be so &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;chaste&amp;quot;. Obviously, they really weren&amp;#039;t so pure and chaste. I mean I definitely don&amp;#039;t think a woman would become a prostitute just because she likes sex. The women that Sanger studied were young, poor immigrants. They needed to make money and there were not many job opportunities for them. I think there&amp;#039;s more to it than just that their husbands and fathers failed them. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn&amp;#039;t find the statistics gathered by Sanger to be other than what I expected.  Young, immigrants, poor, etc.  I did find it amusing that he (as well as everybody else) was convinced women were passionless and just would not be inclined to do such a &amp;quot;profession&amp;quot;.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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The causes for women turning to prostitution were varied but most were centered around what others did to them. Family abandoning them, violated, alcohol were some of the reasons. I thought what was particularly interesting was the number one reason: they voluntarily went into prostitution to gratify their own sexual passions. If the survey is true, why would Sanger feel sympathetic towards the women? The choice was theirs in most cases.  -Amy Van Ness &lt;br /&gt;
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I do not think that all of those women choose to go into prostitution for sexual gratification. There was such a taboo against women who sold themselves that none of those women would do it if not for necessity. The women were probably lying. I felt awful that they had to resort to this to support their family. I am surprised that there were so many that said their family turned them out. I cannot imagine getting thrown out of my house. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that a fair number of women seemed to choose “inclination” as the reason they were prostitutes, which basically means they just liked sex. I personally have a hard time understanding why anyone (even people who really like sex) would choose to be a prostitute unless they had no other means to support themselves. So, how many of these women were actually telling the truth? Were they perhaps to proud to admit that they were prostitutes because they were unable to support themselves another way? Wouldn’t it be worse for them to imply that they were lusty and passionate when it was understood that women were uninterested in sex rather than that they were just simply poor and needy? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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To me Dr. Sanger was reinforcing the notion that women were more primative and needy of men, given that many said that they were in the profession to satisfy their own desires and that the powerful impact that men had on their becoming prostitutes. Although it is interesting to see the doctor blaming some of the issue on men. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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I also have a problem with the category of inclination.  Every one of those examples listed stated that these women became prostitutes due to need for income rather than need for sex.  It seems very much like a stretch to me that those women would become a prostitutes in order to “gratify the sexual passions”, and am more inclined to believe in the analysis of inclination for an “easy life” which suggests need for income and goods.  Sanger himself did not believe this though he refused it because he was of the notion that white women did not want sex, and that he often blamed the men who should be responsible. He was definitely a man of his time. It was however interesting as it looked into other jobs women did besides keeping house and trying to stay virtuous.-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was interesting especially the survey at the beginning listing examples as to why these women became prostitutes. One of the answers that had me questioning was “Too ill to work.” These women would be too ill to work but felt fine enough to have sex for money. Dr. Sangers’ analysis was fascinating as well, he was trying to work out why the women would turn to prostitution. He did not seem to believe the answer of “inclination” as the intro to the article states he saw women as passionless. It seems in many of these historical documents men either saw women as passionless perhaps virtuous or they saw them too passionate and needed to be married in order to keep them in their place. –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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This might be naive  of me but I noticed a lot of the women who became prostitutes said it was because they were seduced and abandoned by lovers, now that is very unfortunate and all but is it necessary to go into prostitution afterwards? I know that losing ones virginity would &amp;quot;ruin&amp;quot; an unmarried girl but why are these girls telling everyone that they were ruined? Maybe these girls were not being discreet about their &amp;quot;torrid&amp;quot; affairs but I feel like it could have been beneficial for them to lie about them!  Obviously in cases where they ended up pregnant this would not be possible but there must have been some cases where they could have gone home and no one would be the wiser! -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Xin Jin&amp;#039;s Contract, 1886 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I just find it very strange that there were contracts for prostitution.  It seems short, but rather thorough.  They  make sure to include what happens if shes sick, pregnant, or runs away.  The three most plausible situations I suppose.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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While this passage was short, it was clear and concise of the punishments women (Xin Jin)would face if they violated their contracts. I did not find it fair that Xin Jin was brought here and owed the family money but was given no means necessary to fulfill her payment other than prostitution. Did Americans find this to be a valid occupation? After reading this contract I wonder if other immigrants faced the same sort of contract or forms of punishment if they did comply? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading this entry, I wondered if all the terms and conditions these girls had to abide by just for passage to America was really worth the risk. If a girl became sick, she had to work longer; or if she became pregnant, the deal was off and she was sent back to China. I feel like sickness and pregnancy were pretty frequent, and to me, its any wonder that these girls actually put themselves through it. It is understandable though, that they only were prostitutes to pay for their passage and afterwards may lead a normal life, but it just seems like such a traumatic thing to go through. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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The language used in the contract made it sound like the customer was renting a car, rather than dealing with a human being: “if a customer asks to take her out” and “she shall be returned within 100 days (239)” come to mind. I’m curious who wrote up the contracts and ran the brothels? Were they whites or other Chinese? Whites hardly considered the Chinese to be human, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they considered it like renting out property, but you’d hope the Chinese would have slightly more respect for their own people. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought this contract (and the others like it) was very interesting.  I would however, have liked to have known the after stories to go with these contracts.  The time at first (four and one half years) seems very small, however like Alex stated, I would think sickness and pregnancy would accumulate a lot of extra time for these ladies.  I would like to have known the actual amount of time they had to work, whether they received their freedom, or whether they lived to see the end.  Were they in the habit of using birth control? How effective was it? These contracts would be very interesting to see in a much larger context to see how the women fared at the end of them. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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I also would have liked to read a personal story about one of these chinese prostitutes. While reading this article as well as the other similar ones dealing with prostitution in the west as well as in New York I found myself wondering about the women who become pregnant. I know they have a specific clause for that in the Chinese Prostitution bill...but would they have the child and continue to raise it? I found myself wondering what the outcome would be for the prostitutes who became pregnant and for their child. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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It does seem strange to have a contract for prostitution - but if prostitution was going on in their homeland, it would only seem strange to us.  Would the women that were prostituted out see this as an opportunity for them, considering they were told they would eventually have freedom? (even though they were lied to and never given their freedom) Another point, it would seem as a no end situation if they got a disease because I would think their chances of getting a disease are so much higher with multiple partners. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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== Bills of Sale of Chinese Prostitutes, 1875-76 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I still think it&amp;#039;s crazy that the price of passage/ food for some Chinese women coming to America was prostitution. I guess if things were worse back in China the option to become a prostitute might seem bright, but I don&amp;#039;t know. The terms for this &amp;quot;occupation&amp;quot; was usually for a few years. These women must have been in real need; I don&amp;#039;t think selling my body would ever be worth coming to America for me.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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To add to what Amy was saying about the length of time a woman would have to serve her term, I find it excessive that if a woman were to &amp;quot;escape and be recovered&amp;quot; (p.238), at least in the case of Yut Kum, then they were asking for a life sentence. I find this extremely excessive. And also, conception is noted as a &amp;quot;sickness&amp;quot; (p. 238); was pregnancy common with concubines? Granted, I doubt that a servant&amp;#039;s mistress would be too concerned with the latest birth control methods. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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The wording of these contracts sounded to me more like slavery than several years of servitude. “Yet Kum consents to prostitute her body to receive company…”; “Ah Ho distinctly agrees to give her body to Mr. Yee for services as a prostitute…”; “She makes her body over to the woman Sep Sam, to serve as a prostitute…”. Each of these contracts emphasizes the fact that the Chinese women no longer owned or controlled their own bodies.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that these contracts seem more like slavery that several years of servitude. I also wonder how often these women became pregnant. What about STDs? I doubt that the &amp;quot;owners&amp;quot; of these women were practicing safe sex. Were disease and pregnancy a big problem for prostitutes at this time? - Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susan Shelby Magoffin in Santa Fe, 1846 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Although the writer of this piece was far from the “civilized” East Coast of the United States, I still found that the cult of domesticity still impacted her. She was very proud of her ability to manage her household, including the servants. In her opinion, success was attained when she could “gain one bright smile and sweet kiss, from my good, kind husband.” She was very concerned with making her home a refuge for her husband when he returned from work.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it comical that Susan Shelby Magoffin thought she needed to &amp;quot;be more expert in ... Spanish&amp;quot; (p. 236) so that she could get advice about men. It is not surprising that she would make the effort to interact with other cultures given her interactions with American women were probably limited. For example, she will be the &amp;quot;only traderess&amp;quot; (p. 235) at the American-thrown Spanish ball. - Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Citizen protest of rape of Indian women in California, 1862 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought that this was a very interesting piece. I was very happy that a citizen would protest the rape of Native Americans even if the ones committing the crime were officers in the US army. I did find it particularly interesting though that the person refers to one officer as possibly being a &amp;quot;pretend Lieut.&amp;quot; I would be curious to know if impersonating soldiers was at all typical if the men could get away with it,(or at least think they could get away with it).-Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece made me kind of sad, especially for the mother, who I feel like realizes what her daughter wants to do and knows that getting an education will be good and beneficial for her, but still does not want to let her go. I feel like the mother in many ways perhaps feels cautious towards the &amp;quot;white men&amp;quot; and the missionaries and distrusts them, and yet, despite this, she sees the merits of an education for her daughter, as well as her daughter&amp;#039;s excitement, and feels she must let her go. I think this relates a lot to what we talked about in class about possible tensions within families as a result of attempts at assimilation, especially between generations. The daughter is excited for this opportunity and to ride on the &amp;quot;iron horse&amp;quot; and to see the land where there are plenty of red apples to eat for everybody, while the mother is watching her traditional world rapidly change all around her because of the white settlers and missionaries- she has to give up her wigwam and now live in a log house, for example. She is a &amp;quot;foreigner&amp;quot; in her own home. At the same time, I also feel sorry for the daughter, as well. After all her excitement at the opportunity to go East, she watches the &amp;quot;lonely figure&amp;quot; of her mother vanish as she drives away, and then feels as &amp;quot;frightened and bewildered as the captured young of a wild creature.&amp;quot; (p.241) I wonder if this was her first time being away from home and all by herself? I feel as if maybe her mother knew exactly what the daughter was getting herself into, but she still let her go- maybe so the daughter could realize it for herself? It is a hard lesson. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the first things that I noticed when reading this piece was the absence of a father.  Her brother Dawee does not seem to be old enough to be part of the decision making process. When faced with the decision, her mother seems very reluctant to let Zitkala-Sa go away but is unable to make a firm decision.  Do you think this situation would have been different if there was a father figure?  Would he have let Zitkala-Sa go away to the white-run school as easily as the mother did?  Would she have been as eager to go?  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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With reference to Allison&amp;#039;s comment about Zitkala-Sa&amp;#039;s mother feeling like a foreigner in her own home, I can only imagine that when Zitkala-Sa returns to her mother, that feeling will strengthen. The assimilation process at these white-run schools were designed to reinvent the children and discouraged any practice of native traditions that might be waiting for her upon her return to her mother. One time I saw pictures of students when they first arrived to a school and after they were &amp;quot;westernized&amp;quot;. The differences with astonishing- I bet when Dawee came back to visit, his mother didn&amp;#039;t even recognize him! Additionally, the pictures only portrayed physical changes (i.e. a haircut), but I bet these were negligible compared to the spiritual changes of religious conversion. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison, this was a very sad piece, both for the mother and Zitkala-Sa. It was interesting that the mother did not trust the missionaries and stated that they lie, yet she finally decides to let her eight year old child go with them. I also found it interesting that her mother makes the housing changes after Dawee comes back from being &amp;quot;educated.&amp;quot; So the influence of the education is indeed working through the children in the efforts to change the way that the Native Americans lived. The fact that even Dawee, having been through the education experience provided by the missionaries, does not think Zitkala-Sa should go makes me wonder why the mother and even Zitkala-Sa did not listen to him. At the end, when Zitkala-Sa gets to the school, her description of how frightened she was was very sad.  The men who came to Zitkala-Sa&amp;#039;s village are referred to as missionaries. At this point, how large of a role did religious organizations play in taking Native American children to schools for the purpose of assimilation? Or was it a combined religious and educational purpose? Also, what kind of education they received at these schools would be interesting to know? -Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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Reading this piece, I felt very sad for both the mother and the daughter. It must have been such a difficult decision for Zitkala-Sa&amp;#039;s mother to make. On one, hand, she already lost three years out of her sons life, and I&amp;#039;m sure he came home as a very different person from what he was like when he left, but on the other hand, the educational opportunities for Zitkala-Sa must have been hard to ignore. I thought the aunt&amp;#039;s foresight on the issue was interesting, when she commented that as Zitkala-Sa grew up there would be fewer and fewer real Dakota and more white men. That recognition of the slow decline of her culture just struck me as very sad, and it made me wonder if that was a common viewpoint among the adults of the tribe. Finally, It was interesting to see how the missionaries tempted Zitkala-Sa into going with them, and how little enticement was actually needed before she was willing to go to the missionary school. ~Melissa Patterson&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. A. M. Greene, in Colorado Territory -- Frontier life – 1887 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Mrs. Greene&amp;#039;s writing about the life in Colorado was very interesting. She was willing to do anything for her husband, even if it meant sacrificing her own comfort and happiness. She clearly hated where they had moved to, and missed her family greatly. It would seem that she would have picked up and moved if given the chance. But the funny thing is, when she is given the chance by her husband, she refuses and says &amp;quot;Go without you, no, never.&amp;quot; (P. 242) I feel as though Mrs. Greene focused on the landscape and other tangible things, instead of looking at the glass half full and realizing she was safe, with her family, etc. But it was probably extrremely hard to leave your home land and move cross country, enduring a rough journey, only to find a place where there was nothing but desert and where you were isolated from everything and everyone. That was probably the hardest part for her. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Violet Cragg requests an Army Pension, 1908 ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_11_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 11 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_11_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-11-05T14:47:01Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* William Sanger, New York Prostitutes, 1858 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Mary Anne Sadlier&amp;#039;s Bessy Conway ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it really interesting that Bessy, upon leaving Ireland to come to America, said that she was planning on returning to her family in a few years. Was it common for men and women who left Ireland to plan on returning one day? Also, I thought it was cool that Bessy was able to return home and help her family, it seems very ideal, like this is what the typical Irish immigrant woman would strive to do, leave home on her own (getting her burden off her family) and making enough money to turn around and help support her family. So what was Mary Anne Sadlier&amp;#039;s goal in writing this story?  -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It was very obvious that Bessy loved Ireland. I also wonder how many Irish immigrants that wanted to return home one day actually did. The trip to America had to be an extremely long trip. For her to come to America, work hard in difficult circumstances, and then make the trip back to Ireland took a lot of strength and courage. I just wonder how often situations like this actually happened. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Bessy Conway was one of the lucky ones because she was able to go and had a job lined up for her with a place to live.  She was one of those who embraced the myth of so much opportunity in a new world.  She was a hard worker and expected the same of others around her (especially the other servants in the house.)-Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the mixed chapters we read of Bessy&amp;#039;s story put a sense of reality on the true plight of young Irish women and men. From the early chapters discussing her families struggles and her earnestness to leave her home to help her family made me wonder if all young immigrants cared the same for Ireland and their families as Bessy? Chapters 6 and 15 stood out the most to me with their discussion of religion and how it was so important eventually leading to Bessy&amp;#039;s dismissal was this normal in America? Did Americans fear religious takeover from the Irish immigrants? -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the pictures of the starving people was awful and it was hard to read the chapter about Bessy&amp;#039;s starving family. They kept their faith in God and kept saying that God would save them. I cannot imagine having enough food. Bessy was definitely a very lucky girl that she had a good job and earned quite a bit of money. It think it is interesting that Mary Anne Sadlier made Bessy out to be a hard worker which and implied that is why she was successful. Bessy just had a better opportunity then most. The author made the other servant out to be lazy which is why they ultimately were lost to poverty.  - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Jannicke Saehle, 1847, Norwegian immigrant’s letters ==&lt;br /&gt;
I enjoyed this piece, it provided a lot of information about immigrants (though certainly not the majority of the poor Irish who suffered an awful journey across the Atlantic.) Jannicke Saehle obviously has some money as she was able to site see once arriving in America. I found her statement about sea sickness, “And after five minutes my turn came, also, to contribute my share to the Atlantic Ocean,” quite humorous. &lt;br /&gt;
I also found it interesting her mentioning the abundance of food in America and that Americans tended to toss the extra to swine while people in her homeland starved. I certainly hope Johannes, her brother to whom she was writing, was not one of the starving people for I would hate to hear of all the waste if I were to be one of the starving poor. &lt;br /&gt;
One question, though, how common were the museums that she described with wild animals?  –Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn&amp;#039;t realize that museuems of the kind she was describing existed at this time period in New York...I wonder if she was mentioning the Museum of Natural History. I have been there but who is the soldier with no head? I don&amp;#039;t remember seeing that last time I went to any history museums. Her story was nice to read, because unlike so many others she truly seems to be living a better life in America. Even her passage over seemed to be blessed with good fortune. the tone of Jannickes story was happy and upbeat making her seem like the type of person who would find the silver lining in ever episode. However I wonder if she was trying to play things up a bit to comfort her family that maybe was worried about her well being?--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== William Sanger, New York Prostitutes, 1858 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I found it interesting that Sanger sympathizes with the prostitutes in his study and that he blamed fathers, husbands, and families for not doing their job.  The immorality is from the failures of these figures in women&amp;#039;s lives.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found Dr. Sanger&amp;#039;s belief that the women he interviewed were victims of their environment (and not necessarily prostitutes because of a moral flaw in character, etc.) very interesting. I think it could be applied in geographical concepts and ideas, too- for example, the belief in &amp;quot;environmental determinism&amp;quot; (or the idea that your environment and surroundings have a major impact on who you are as a person) versus &amp;quot;environmental possibilism&amp;quot;, where your environment can place some limits on you, but you are essentially responsible for who you are and what you do. I also found it interesting that, in discussing the reasons why some of the women would have cited &amp;quot;Inclination&amp;quot; as a reason for their becoming a prostitute, Dr. Sanger also mentioned and acknowledged female desires. In most of what we have discussed in class, we have talked about how women were expected to be &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;chaste&amp;quot;, while only men could actually have sexual desires and emotions. Dr. Sanger states, &amp;quot;The force of desire can be neither denied nor disputed, but still in the bosoms of most females that force exists in a slumbering state until aroused by some outside influences.&amp;quot; Thus, he still, in many ways, is reinforcing the belief that women (while acknowledging that they might actually have &amp;quot;desires&amp;quot;- shocking!)should keep these repressed and private. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that it is very interesting that Sanger blamed husbands, fathers, and the environment for these women becoming prostitutes. I think that a lot of that comes from the fact that women were expected to be so &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;chaste&amp;quot;. Obviously, they really weren&amp;#039;t so pure and chaste. I mean I definitely don&amp;#039;t think a woman would become a prostitute just because she likes sex. The women that Sanger studied were young, poor immigrants. They needed to make money and there were not many job opportunities for them. I think there&amp;#039;s more to it than just that their husbands and fathers failed them. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn&amp;#039;t find the statistics gathered by Sanger to be other than what I expected.  Young, immigrants, poor, etc.  I did find it amusing that he (as well as everybody else) was convinced women were passionless and just would not be inclined to do such a &amp;quot;profession&amp;quot;.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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The causes for women turning to prostitution were varied but most were centered around what others did to them. Family abandoning them, violated, alcohol were some of the reasons. I thought what was particularly interesting was the number one reason: they voluntarily went into prostitution to gratify their own sexual passions. If the survey is true, why would Sanger feel sympathetic towards the women? The choice was theirs in most cases.  -Amy Van Ness &lt;br /&gt;
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I do not think that all of those women choose to go into prostitution for sexual gratification. There was such a taboo against women who sold themselves that none of those women would do it if not for necessity. The women were probably lying. I felt awful that they had to resort to this to support their family. I am surprised that there were so many that said their family turned them out. I cannot imagine getting thrown out of my house. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that a fair number of women seemed to choose “inclination” as the reason they were prostitutes, which basically means they just liked sex. I personally have a hard time understanding why anyone (even people who really like sex) would choose to be a prostitute unless they had no other means to support themselves. So, how many of these women were actually telling the truth? Were they perhaps to proud to admit that they were prostitutes because they were unable to support themselves another way? Wouldn’t it be worse for them to imply that they were lusty and passionate when it was understood that women were uninterested in sex rather than that they were just simply poor and needy? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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To me Dr. Sanger was reinforcing the notion that women were more primative and needy of men, given that many said that they were in the profession to satisfy their own desires and that the powerful impact that men had on their becoming prostitutes. Although it is interesting to see the doctor blaming some of the issue on men. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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I also have a problem with the category of inclination.  Every one of those examples listed stated that these women became prostitutes due to need for income rather than need for sex.  It seems very much like a stretch to me that those women would become a prostitutes in order to “gratify the sexual passions”, and am more inclined to believe in the analysis of inclination for an “easy life” which suggests need for income and goods.  Sanger himself did not believe this though he refused it because he was of the notion that white women did not want sex, and that he often blamed the men who should be responsible. He was definitely a man of his time. It was however interesting as it looked into other jobs women did besides keeping house and trying to stay virtuous.-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was interesting especially the survey at the beginning listing examples as to why these women became prostitutes. One of the answers that had me questioning was “Too ill to work.” These women would be too ill to work but felt fine enough to have sex for money. Dr. Sangers’ analysis was fascinating as well, he was trying to work out why the women would turn to prostitution. He did not seem to believe the answer of “inclination” as the intro to the article states he saw women as passionless. It seems in many of these historical documents men either saw women as passionless perhaps virtuous or they saw them too passionate and needed to be married in order to keep them in their place. –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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This might be naive  of me but I noticed a lot of the women who became prostitutes said it was because they were seduced and abandoned by lovers, now that is very unfortunate and all but is it necessary to go into prostitution afterwards? I know that losing ones virginity would &amp;quot;ruin&amp;quot; an unmarried girl but why are these girls telling everyone that they were ruined? Maybe these girls were not being discreet about their &amp;quot;torrid&amp;quot; affairs but I feel like it could have been beneficial for them to lie about them!  Obviously in cases where they ended up pregnant this would not be possible but there must have been some cases where they could have gone home and no one would be the wiser! -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Xin Jin&amp;#039;s Contract, 1886 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I just find it very strange that there were contracts for prostitution.  It seems short, but rather thorough.  They  make sure to include what happens if shes sick, pregnant, or runs away.  The three most plausible situations I suppose.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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While this passage was short, it was clear and concise of the punishments women (Xin Jin)would face if they violated their contracts. I did not find it fair that Xin Jin was brought here and owed the family money but was given no means necessary to fulfill her payment other than prostitution. Did Americans find this to be a valid occupation? After reading this contract I wonder if other immigrants faced the same sort of contract or forms of punishment if they did comply? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading this entry, I wondered if all the terms and conditions these girls had to abide by just for passage to America was really worth the risk. If a girl became sick, she had to work longer; or if she became pregnant, the deal was off and she was sent back to China. I feel like sickness and pregnancy were pretty frequent, and to me, its any wonder that these girls actually put themselves through it. It is understandable though, that they only were prostitutes to pay for their passage and afterwards may lead a normal life, but it just seems like such a traumatic thing to go through. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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The language used in the contract made it sound like the customer was renting a car, rather than dealing with a human being: “if a customer asks to take her out” and “she shall be returned within 100 days (239)” come to mind. I’m curious who wrote up the contracts and ran the brothels? Were they whites or other Chinese? Whites hardly considered the Chinese to be human, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they considered it like renting out property, but you’d hope the Chinese would have slightly more respect for their own people. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought this contract (and the others like it) was very interesting.  I would however, have liked to have known the after stories to go with these contracts.  The time at first (four and one half years) seems very small, however like Alex stated, I would think sickness and pregnancy would accumulate a lot of extra time for these ladies.  I would like to have known the actual amount of time they had to work, whether they received their freedom, or whether they lived to see the end.  Were they in the habit of using birth control? How effective was it? These contracts would be very interesting to see in a much larger context to see how the women fared at the end of them. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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It does seem strange to have a contract for prostitution - but if prostitution was going on in their homeland, it would only seem strange to us.  Would the women that were prostituted out see this as an opportunity for them, considering they were told they would eventually have freedom? (even though they were lied to and never given their freedom) Another point, it would seem as a no end situation if they got a disease because I would think their chances of getting a disease are so much higher with multiple partners. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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== Bills of Sale of Chinese Prostitutes, 1875-76 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I still think it&amp;#039;s crazy that the price of passage/ food for some Chinese women coming to America was prostitution. I guess if things were worse back in China the option to become a prostitute might seem bright, but I don&amp;#039;t know. The terms for this &amp;quot;occupation&amp;quot; was usually for a few years. These women must have been in real need; I don&amp;#039;t think selling my body would ever be worth coming to America for me.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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To add to what Amy was saying about the length of time a woman would have to serve her term, I find it excessive that if a woman were to &amp;quot;escape and be recovered&amp;quot; (p.238), at least in the case of Yut Kum, then they were asking for a life sentence. I find this extremely excessive. And also, conception is noted as a &amp;quot;sickness&amp;quot; (p. 238); was pregnancy common with concubines? Granted, I doubt that a servant&amp;#039;s mistress would be too concerned with the latest birth control methods. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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The wording of these contracts sounded to me more like slavery than several years of servitude. “Yet Kum consents to prostitute her body to receive company…”; “Ah Ho distinctly agrees to give her body to Mr. Yee for services as a prostitute…”; “She makes her body over to the woman Sep Sam, to serve as a prostitute…”. Each of these contracts emphasizes the fact that the Chinese women no longer owned or controlled their own bodies.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that these contracts seem more like slavery that several years of servitude. I also wonder how often these women became pregnant. What about STDs? I doubt that the &amp;quot;owners&amp;quot; of these women were practicing safe sex. Were disease and pregnancy a big problem for prostitutes at this time? - Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susan Shelby Magoffin in Santa Fe, 1846 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Although the writer of this piece was far from the “civilized” East Coast of the United States, I still found that the cult of domesticity still impacted her. She was very proud of her ability to manage her household, including the servants. In her opinion, success was attained when she could “gain one bright smile and sweet kiss, from my good, kind husband.” She was very concerned with making her home a refuge for her husband when he returned from work.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it comical that Susan Shelby Magoffin thought she needed to &amp;quot;be more expert in ... Spanish&amp;quot; (p. 236) so that she could get advice about men. It is not surprising that she would make the effort to interact with other cultures given her interactions with American women were probably limited. For example, she will be the &amp;quot;only traderess&amp;quot; (p. 235) at the American-thrown Spanish ball. - Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Citizen protest of rape of Indian women in California, 1862 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought that this was a very interesting piece. I was very happy that a citizen would protest the rape of Native Americans even if the ones committing the crime were officers in the US army. I did find it particularly interesting though that the person refers to one officer as possibly being a &amp;quot;pretend Lieut.&amp;quot; I would be curious to know if impersonating soldiers was at all typical if the men could get away with it,(or at least think they could get away with it).-Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece made me kind of sad, especially for the mother, who I feel like realizes what her daughter wants to do and knows that getting an education will be good and beneficial for her, but still does not want to let her go. I feel like the mother in many ways perhaps feels cautious towards the &amp;quot;white men&amp;quot; and the missionaries and distrusts them, and yet, despite this, she sees the merits of an education for her daughter, as well as her daughter&amp;#039;s excitement, and feels she must let her go. I think this relates a lot to what we talked about in class about possible tensions within families as a result of attempts at assimilation, especially between generations. The daughter is excited for this opportunity and to ride on the &amp;quot;iron horse&amp;quot; and to see the land where there are plenty of red apples to eat for everybody, while the mother is watching her traditional world rapidly change all around her because of the white settlers and missionaries- she has to give up her wigwam and now live in a log house, for example. She is a &amp;quot;foreigner&amp;quot; in her own home. At the same time, I also feel sorry for the daughter, as well. After all her excitement at the opportunity to go East, she watches the &amp;quot;lonely figure&amp;quot; of her mother vanish as she drives away, and then feels as &amp;quot;frightened and bewildered as the captured young of a wild creature.&amp;quot; (p.241) I wonder if this was her first time being away from home and all by herself? I feel as if maybe her mother knew exactly what the daughter was getting herself into, but she still let her go- maybe so the daughter could realize it for herself? It is a hard lesson. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the first things that I noticed when reading this piece was the absence of a father.  Her brother Dawee does not seem to be old enough to be part of the decision making process. When faced with the decision, her mother seems very reluctant to let Zitkala-Sa go away but is unable to make a firm decision.  Do you think this situation would have been different if there was a father figure?  Would he have let Zitkala-Sa go away to the white-run school as easily as the mother did?  Would she have been as eager to go?  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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With reference to Allison&amp;#039;s comment about Zitkala-Sa&amp;#039;s mother feeling like a foreigner in her own home, I can only imagine that when Zitkala-Sa returns to her mother, that feeling will strengthen. The assimilation process at these white-run schools were designed to reinvent the children and discouraged any practice of native traditions that might be waiting for her upon her return to her mother. One time I saw pictures of students when they first arrived to a school and after they were &amp;quot;westernized&amp;quot;. The differences with astonishing- I bet when Dawee came back to visit, his mother didn&amp;#039;t even recognize him! Additionally, the pictures only portrayed physical changes (i.e. a haircut), but I bet these were negligible compared to the spiritual changes of religious conversion. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison, this was a very sad piece, both for the mother and Zitkala-Sa. It was interesting that the mother did not trust the missionaries and stated that they lie, yet she finally decides to let her eight year old child go with them. I also found it interesting that her mother makes the housing changes after Dawee comes back from being &amp;quot;educated.&amp;quot; So the influence of the education is indeed working through the children in the efforts to change the way that the Native Americans lived. The fact that even Dawee, having been through the education experience provided by the missionaries, does not think Zitkala-Sa should go makes me wonder why the mother and even Zitkala-Sa did not listen to him. At the end, when Zitkala-Sa gets to the school, her description of how frightened she was was very sad.  The men who came to Zitkala-Sa&amp;#039;s village are referred to as missionaries. At this point, how large of a role did religious organizations play in taking Native American children to schools for the purpose of assimilation? Or was it a combined religious and educational purpose? Also, what kind of education they received at these schools would be interesting to know? -Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
== Mrs. A. M. Greene, in Colorado Territory -- Frontier life – 1887 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Mrs. Greene&amp;#039;s writing about the life in Colorado was very interesting. She was willing to do anything for her husband, even if it meant sacrificing her own comfort and happiness. She clearly hated where they had moved to, and missed her family greatly. It would seem that she would have picked up and moved if given the chance. But the funny thing is, when she is given the chance by her husband, she refuses and says &amp;quot;Go without you, no, never.&amp;quot; (P. 242) I feel as though Mrs. Greene focused on the landscape and other tangible things, instead of looking at the glass half full and realizing she was safe, with her family, etc. But it was probably extrremely hard to leave your home land and move cross country, enduring a rough journey, only to find a place where there was nothing but desert and where you were isolated from everything and everyone. That was probably the hardest part for her. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Violet Cragg requests an Army Pension, 1908 ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_11_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 11 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_11_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-11-05T14:40:32Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Jannicke Saehle, 1847, Norwegian immigrant’s letters */&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;== Mary Anne Sadlier&amp;#039;s Bessy Conway ==&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I found it really interesting that Bessy, upon leaving Ireland to come to America, said that she was planning on returning to her family in a few years. Was it common for men and women who left Ireland to plan on returning one day? Also, I thought it was cool that Bessy was able to return home and help her family, it seems very ideal, like this is what the typical Irish immigrant woman would strive to do, leave home on her own (getting her burden off her family) and making enough money to turn around and help support her family. So what was Mary Anne Sadlier&amp;#039;s goal in writing this story?  -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It was very obvious that Bessy loved Ireland. I also wonder how many Irish immigrants that wanted to return home one day actually did. The trip to America had to be an extremely long trip. For her to come to America, work hard in difficult circumstances, and then make the trip back to Ireland took a lot of strength and courage. I just wonder how often situations like this actually happened. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I think that Bessy Conway was one of the lucky ones because she was able to go and had a job lined up for her with a place to live.  She was one of those who embraced the myth of so much opportunity in a new world.  She was a hard worker and expected the same of others around her (especially the other servants in the house.)-Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I found the mixed chapters we read of Bessy&amp;#039;s story put a sense of reality on the true plight of young Irish women and men. From the early chapters discussing her families struggles and her earnestness to leave her home to help her family made me wonder if all young immigrants cared the same for Ireland and their families as Bessy? Chapters 6 and 15 stood out the most to me with their discussion of religion and how it was so important eventually leading to Bessy&amp;#039;s dismissal was this normal in America? Did Americans fear religious takeover from the Irish immigrants? -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the pictures of the starving people was awful and it was hard to read the chapter about Bessy&amp;#039;s starving family. They kept their faith in God and kept saying that God would save them. I cannot imagine having enough food. Bessy was definitely a very lucky girl that she had a good job and earned quite a bit of money. It think it is interesting that Mary Anne Sadlier made Bessy out to be a hard worker which and implied that is why she was successful. Bessy just had a better opportunity then most. The author made the other servant out to be lazy which is why they ultimately were lost to poverty.  - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Jannicke Saehle, 1847, Norwegian immigrant’s letters ==&lt;br /&gt;
I enjoyed this piece, it provided a lot of information about immigrants (though certainly not the majority of the poor Irish who suffered an awful journey across the Atlantic.) Jannicke Saehle obviously has some money as she was able to site see once arriving in America. I found her statement about sea sickness, “And after five minutes my turn came, also, to contribute my share to the Atlantic Ocean,” quite humorous. &lt;br /&gt;
I also found it interesting her mentioning the abundance of food in America and that Americans tended to toss the extra to swine while people in her homeland starved. I certainly hope Johannes, her brother to whom she was writing, was not one of the starving people for I would hate to hear of all the waste if I were to be one of the starving poor. &lt;br /&gt;
One question, though, how common were the museums that she described with wild animals?  –Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn&amp;#039;t realize that museuems of the kind she was describing existed at this time period in New York...I wonder if she was mentioning the Museum of Natural History. I have been there but who is the soldier with no head? I don&amp;#039;t remember seeing that last time I went to any history museums. Her story was nice to read, because unlike so many others she truly seems to be living a better life in America. Even her passage over seemed to be blessed with good fortune. the tone of Jannickes story was happy and upbeat making her seem like the type of person who would find the silver lining in ever episode. However I wonder if she was trying to play things up a bit to comfort her family that maybe was worried about her well being?--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== William Sanger, New York Prostitutes, 1858 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I found it interesting that Sanger sympathizes with the prostitutes in his study and that he blamed fathers, husbands, and families for not doing their job.  The immorality is from the failures of these figures in women&amp;#039;s lives.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found Dr. Sanger&amp;#039;s belief that the women he interviewed were victims of their environment (and not necessarily prostitutes because of a moral flaw in character, etc.) very interesting. I think it could be applied in geographical concepts and ideas, too- for example, the belief in &amp;quot;environmental determinism&amp;quot; (or the idea that your environment and surroundings have a major impact on who you are as a person) versus &amp;quot;environmental possibilism&amp;quot;, where your environment can place some limits on you, but you are essentially responsible for who you are and what you do. I also found it interesting that, in discussing the reasons why some of the women would have cited &amp;quot;Inclination&amp;quot; as a reason for their becoming a prostitute, Dr. Sanger also mentioned and acknowledged female desires. In most of what we have discussed in class, we have talked about how women were expected to be &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;chaste&amp;quot;, while only men could actually have sexual desires and emotions. Dr. Sanger states, &amp;quot;The force of desire can be neither denied nor disputed, but still in the bosoms of most females that force exists in a slumbering state until aroused by some outside influences.&amp;quot; Thus, he still, in many ways, is reinforcing the belief that women (while acknowledging that they might actually have &amp;quot;desires&amp;quot;- shocking!)should keep these repressed and private. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that it is very interesting that Sanger blamed husbands, fathers, and the environment for these women becoming prostitutes. I think that a lot of that comes from the fact that women were expected to be so &amp;quot;pure&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;chaste&amp;quot;. Obviously, they really weren&amp;#039;t so pure and chaste. I mean I definitely don&amp;#039;t think a woman would become a prostitute just because she likes sex. The women that Sanger studied were young, poor immigrants. They needed to make money and there were not many job opportunities for them. I think there&amp;#039;s more to it than just that their husbands and fathers failed them. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn&amp;#039;t find the statistics gathered by Sanger to be other than what I expected.  Young, immigrants, poor, etc.  I did find it amusing that he (as well as everybody else) was convinced women were passionless and just would not be inclined to do such a &amp;quot;profession&amp;quot;.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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The causes for women turning to prostitution were varied but most were centered around what others did to them. Family abandoning them, violated, alcohol were some of the reasons. I thought what was particularly interesting was the number one reason: they voluntarily went into prostitution to gratify their own sexual passions. If the survey is true, why would Sanger feel sympathetic towards the women? The choice was theirs in most cases.  -Amy Van Ness &lt;br /&gt;
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I do not think that all of those women choose to go into prostitution for sexual gratification. There was such a taboo against women who sold themselves that none of those women would do it if not for necessity. The women were probably lying. I felt awful that they had to resort to this to support their family. I am surprised that there were so many that said their family turned them out. I cannot imagine getting thrown out of my house. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that a fair number of women seemed to choose “inclination” as the reason they were prostitutes, which basically means they just liked sex. I personally have a hard time understanding why anyone (even people who really like sex) would choose to be a prostitute unless they had no other means to support themselves. So, how many of these women were actually telling the truth? Were they perhaps to proud to admit that they were prostitutes because they were unable to support themselves another way? Wouldn’t it be worse for them to imply that they were lusty and passionate when it was understood that women were uninterested in sex rather than that they were just simply poor and needy? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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To me Dr. Sanger was reinforcing the notion that women were more primative and needy of men, given that many said that they were in the profession to satisfy their own desires and that the powerful impact that men had on their becoming prostitutes. Although it is interesting to see the doctor blaming some of the issue on men. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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I also have a problem with the category of inclination.  Every one of those examples listed stated that these women became prostitutes due to need for income rather than need for sex.  It seems very much like a stretch to me that those women would become a prostitutes in order to “gratify the sexual passions”, and am more inclined to believe in the analysis of inclination for an “easy life” which suggests need for income and goods.  Sanger himself did not believe this though he refused it because he was of the notion that white women did not want sex, and that he often blamed the men who should be responsible. He was definitely a man of his time. It was however interesting as it looked into other jobs women did besides keeping house and trying to stay virtuous.-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was interesting especially the survey at the beginning listing examples as to why these women became prostitutes. One of the answers that had me questioning was “Too ill to work.” These women would be too ill to work but felt fine enough to have sex for money. Dr. Sangers’ analysis was fascinating as well, he was trying to work out why the women would turn to prostitution. He did not seem to believe the answer of “inclination” as the intro to the article states he saw women as passionless. It seems in many of these historical documents men either saw women as passionless perhaps virtuous or they saw them too passionate and needed to be married in order to keep them in their place. –Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Xin Jin&amp;#039;s Contract, 1886 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I just find it very strange that there were contracts for prostitution.  It seems short, but rather thorough.  They  make sure to include what happens if shes sick, pregnant, or runs away.  The three most plausible situations I suppose.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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While this passage was short, it was clear and concise of the punishments women (Xin Jin)would face if they violated their contracts. I did not find it fair that Xin Jin was brought here and owed the family money but was given no means necessary to fulfill her payment other than prostitution. Did Americans find this to be a valid occupation? After reading this contract I wonder if other immigrants faced the same sort of contract or forms of punishment if they did comply? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading this entry, I wondered if all the terms and conditions these girls had to abide by just for passage to America was really worth the risk. If a girl became sick, she had to work longer; or if she became pregnant, the deal was off and she was sent back to China. I feel like sickness and pregnancy were pretty frequent, and to me, its any wonder that these girls actually put themselves through it. It is understandable though, that they only were prostitutes to pay for their passage and afterwards may lead a normal life, but it just seems like such a traumatic thing to go through. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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The language used in the contract made it sound like the customer was renting a car, rather than dealing with a human being: “if a customer asks to take her out” and “she shall be returned within 100 days (239)” come to mind. I’m curious who wrote up the contracts and ran the brothels? Were they whites or other Chinese? Whites hardly considered the Chinese to be human, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they considered it like renting out property, but you’d hope the Chinese would have slightly more respect for their own people. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought this contract (and the others like it) was very interesting.  I would however, have liked to have known the after stories to go with these contracts.  The time at first (four and one half years) seems very small, however like Alex stated, I would think sickness and pregnancy would accumulate a lot of extra time for these ladies.  I would like to have known the actual amount of time they had to work, whether they received their freedom, or whether they lived to see the end.  Were they in the habit of using birth control? How effective was it? These contracts would be very interesting to see in a much larger context to see how the women fared at the end of them. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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It does seem strange to have a contract for prostitution - but if prostitution was going on in their homeland, it would only seem strange to us.  Would the women that were prostituted out see this as an opportunity for them, considering they were told they would eventually have freedom? (even though they were lied to and never given their freedom) Another point, it would seem as a no end situation if they got a disease because I would think their chances of getting a disease are so much higher with multiple partners. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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== Bills of Sale of Chinese Prostitutes, 1875-76 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I still think it&amp;#039;s crazy that the price of passage/ food for some Chinese women coming to America was prostitution. I guess if things were worse back in China the option to become a prostitute might seem bright, but I don&amp;#039;t know. The terms for this &amp;quot;occupation&amp;quot; was usually for a few years. These women must have been in real need; I don&amp;#039;t think selling my body would ever be worth coming to America for me.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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To add to what Amy was saying about the length of time a woman would have to serve her term, I find it excessive that if a woman were to &amp;quot;escape and be recovered&amp;quot; (p.238), at least in the case of Yut Kum, then they were asking for a life sentence. I find this extremely excessive. And also, conception is noted as a &amp;quot;sickness&amp;quot; (p. 238); was pregnancy common with concubines? Granted, I doubt that a servant&amp;#039;s mistress would be too concerned with the latest birth control methods. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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The wording of these contracts sounded to me more like slavery than several years of servitude. “Yet Kum consents to prostitute her body to receive company…”; “Ah Ho distinctly agrees to give her body to Mr. Yee for services as a prostitute…”; “She makes her body over to the woman Sep Sam, to serve as a prostitute…”. Each of these contracts emphasizes the fact that the Chinese women no longer owned or controlled their own bodies.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that these contracts seem more like slavery that several years of servitude. I also wonder how often these women became pregnant. What about STDs? I doubt that the &amp;quot;owners&amp;quot; of these women were practicing safe sex. Were disease and pregnancy a big problem for prostitutes at this time? - Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susan Shelby Magoffin in Santa Fe, 1846 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Although the writer of this piece was far from the “civilized” East Coast of the United States, I still found that the cult of domesticity still impacted her. She was very proud of her ability to manage her household, including the servants. In her opinion, success was attained when she could “gain one bright smile and sweet kiss, from my good, kind husband.” She was very concerned with making her home a refuge for her husband when he returned from work.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it comical that Susan Shelby Magoffin thought she needed to &amp;quot;be more expert in ... Spanish&amp;quot; (p. 236) so that she could get advice about men. It is not surprising that she would make the effort to interact with other cultures given her interactions with American women were probably limited. For example, she will be the &amp;quot;only traderess&amp;quot; (p. 235) at the American-thrown Spanish ball. - Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Citizen protest of rape of Indian women in California, 1862 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought that this was a very interesting piece. I was very happy that a citizen would protest the rape of Native Americans even if the ones committing the crime were officers in the US army. I did find it particularly interesting though that the person refers to one officer as possibly being a &amp;quot;pretend Lieut.&amp;quot; I would be curious to know if impersonating soldiers was at all typical if the men could get away with it,(or at least think they could get away with it).-Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Zitkala-Sa Travels to the Land of the Big Red Apples, 1884 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This piece made me kind of sad, especially for the mother, who I feel like realizes what her daughter wants to do and knows that getting an education will be good and beneficial for her, but still does not want to let her go. I feel like the mother in many ways perhaps feels cautious towards the &amp;quot;white men&amp;quot; and the missionaries and distrusts them, and yet, despite this, she sees the merits of an education for her daughter, as well as her daughter&amp;#039;s excitement, and feels she must let her go. I think this relates a lot to what we talked about in class about possible tensions within families as a result of attempts at assimilation, especially between generations. The daughter is excited for this opportunity and to ride on the &amp;quot;iron horse&amp;quot; and to see the land where there are plenty of red apples to eat for everybody, while the mother is watching her traditional world rapidly change all around her because of the white settlers and missionaries- she has to give up her wigwam and now live in a log house, for example. She is a &amp;quot;foreigner&amp;quot; in her own home. At the same time, I also feel sorry for the daughter, as well. After all her excitement at the opportunity to go East, she watches the &amp;quot;lonely figure&amp;quot; of her mother vanish as she drives away, and then feels as &amp;quot;frightened and bewildered as the captured young of a wild creature.&amp;quot; (p.241) I wonder if this was her first time being away from home and all by herself? I feel as if maybe her mother knew exactly what the daughter was getting herself into, but she still let her go- maybe so the daughter could realize it for herself? It is a hard lesson. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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One of the first things that I noticed when reading this piece was the absence of a father.  Her brother Dawee does not seem to be old enough to be part of the decision making process. When faced with the decision, her mother seems very reluctant to let Zitkala-Sa go away but is unable to make a firm decision.  Do you think this situation would have been different if there was a father figure?  Would he have let Zitkala-Sa go away to the white-run school as easily as the mother did?  Would she have been as eager to go?  - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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With reference to Allison&amp;#039;s comment about Zitkala-Sa&amp;#039;s mother feeling like a foreigner in her own home, I can only imagine that when Zitkala-Sa returns to her mother, that feeling will strengthen. The assimilation process at these white-run schools were designed to reinvent the children and discouraged any practice of native traditions that might be waiting for her upon her return to her mother. One time I saw pictures of students when they first arrived to a school and after they were &amp;quot;westernized&amp;quot;. The differences with astonishing- I bet when Dawee came back to visit, his mother didn&amp;#039;t even recognize him! Additionally, the pictures only portrayed physical changes (i.e. a haircut), but I bet these were negligible compared to the spiritual changes of religious conversion. -Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison, this was a very sad piece, both for the mother and Zitkala-Sa. It was interesting that the mother did not trust the missionaries and stated that they lie, yet she finally decides to let her eight year old child go with them. I also found it interesting that her mother makes the housing changes after Dawee comes back from being &amp;quot;educated.&amp;quot; So the influence of the education is indeed working through the children in the efforts to change the way that the Native Americans lived. The fact that even Dawee, having been through the education experience provided by the missionaries, does not think Zitkala-Sa should go makes me wonder why the mother and even Zitkala-Sa did not listen to him. At the end, when Zitkala-Sa gets to the school, her description of how frightened she was was very sad.  The men who came to Zitkala-Sa&amp;#039;s village are referred to as missionaries. At this point, how large of a role did religious organizations play in taking Native American children to schools for the purpose of assimilation? Or was it a combined religious and educational purpose? Also, what kind of education they received at these schools would be interesting to know? -Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. A. M. Greene, in Colorado Territory -- Frontier life – 1887 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Mrs. Greene&amp;#039;s writing about the life in Colorado was very interesting. She was willing to do anything for her husband, even if it meant sacrificing her own comfort and happiness. She clearly hated where they had moved to, and missed her family greatly. It would seem that she would have picked up and moved if given the chance. But the funny thing is, when she is given the chance by her husband, she refuses and says &amp;quot;Go without you, no, never.&amp;quot; (P. 242) I feel as though Mrs. Greene focused on the landscape and other tangible things, instead of looking at the glass half full and realizing she was safe, with her family, etc. But it was probably extrremely hard to leave your home land and move cross country, enduring a rough journey, only to find a place where there was nothing but desert and where you were isolated from everything and everyone. That was probably the hardest part for her. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Violet Cragg requests an Army Pension, 1908 ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_10_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 10 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_10_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-29T05:16:04Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Thelma Jennings, “Sexual Exploitation of African American Slave Women,” 1990 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Sarah Haynesworth Gayle, “An Alabama Diary,” 1828, 1833 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In Sarah Haynesworth Gayle’s diary she talks about how her slaves are no longer as obedient as they had been previously. She describes them as lazy and full of complaints. Even her favorite slave would not listen. What is interesting is that she takes this as an attack on herself, she states “I am unable to accommodate myself to the disagreeable change.” I’m not exactly sure what she was expected to do, or what she could do. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Sarah Haynesworth’s diary entry where she was complaining about slave’s disobedience was written in 1828, I am having a hard time figuring out where this change in the slaves is coming from. In this context of time, this was before Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, but way after other attempted slave rebellions. So, I am curious as to where this change was coming from?  – Erin Sanderson &lt;br /&gt;
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Maybe Sarah Haynesworth Gayle&amp;#039;s means of discipline was not as threatening to the slaves as it had been under her parents and felt that they could rebel more strongly without a proactive master. Though I don&amp;#039;t think that their was goal to to be sold (a group that size may have had slave families), nothing is said about actions taken by mr or mrs Gayle to correct their behavior and Mrs. Gayle seems to use the sale of her slaves as vengeance to the poor behavior they had been exhibiting. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Angelina Grimké Weld, 1839, “The Cruel Mistress” ==&lt;br /&gt;
I think it&amp;#039;s interesting Angelina Grimke Weld, when referring to the abuse of the Cruel Mistress towards her house servants, points out that this woman had no shame in the abuse towards them.  Weld goes on and on about these horrible atrocities of the abuse and stated throughout this piece that this mistress was a respectable Christian women.  This made Weld as an abolitionist stand out as only a few.  The abuse of slaves was accepted and probably expected in order to remain in control of them in the eyes of a slave owner.  This slave holder without a doubt probably made a spectacle to make sure the slaves remained obedient.  This female mistress seems extremely temperamental.  The pious and vulgar language used against her slaves was likely her attempt to make sure they knew she was above them in every manor -race, class, and possibly better in Gods eyes as well.  I am curious to know how they thought God looked at a black person, did they think God perceived them as they did? -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it is interesting that this woman is such a paragon of virtue according to upper society and she is kind and generous to the poor but cannot see what a tyrant she is toward her slaves. It is also interesting to see a woman who id depicted in a cruel light. They are supposed to be the kinder gentler sex and here she is committing atrocities toward her slaves. It is an abuse of power and yet because they are property she cannot see it as such. I am sure that women all over the south commited cruel if not crueler acts then their husbands. Women sometimes are much crueler then men so I am sure they thought of new ways to punish their slaves all the time. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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Slavery obviously had a serious emotional and psychological impact on slaves, and the Grimké reading shows how slavery could impact whites. In the case described here a woman is cruel and abusive, faultfinding, and prone towards emotional outbursts that could be extended beyond her slaves and onto her family. There’s also the matter of hypocrisy in being accepted by the community as a good Christian in spite of these vicious faults. However, I’m curious what kind of psychological effects slavery had on men and woman of the South who did not believe in slavery, rare as they were, but who witnessed its horrors. Angelina says “one who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave (217).” But people like the Grimké sisters saw human beings, and constantly witnessing violence done to others can be quite a harrowing experience. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing that I was not quite sure about in this article was who slavery was doing the most damage to.  While the the descriptions of the beatings of the slaves did make me feel for them, it seemed to me that the point of the article was to show how bad slavery made the slave-owning women become.  Were the descriptions of the punishments that the slaves faced more horrendous due to the fact that a women was administering them?  Would this writing have been less effective if it had described a slave-owning male?   -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I like the question that John brought up in his post, I think that Angelina Grimke purposely depicted a slave owning female as opposed to male. At least in my opinion it seemed like it would be more shocking to Northern women to read of the cruelty being administered by their southern counterparts. I think her story might have been less shocking if she had depicted a tale of a cruel master. I noticed that the husband (if he existed) of the mistress in question was not mentioned during the story. Beating and whipping definitely appeared as punishments that would be associated with male slave owners and not mistresses.I was horrified that a supposedly gentile woman could administer such terrible beatings. It is much easier as the reader to conjure up an image of an evil slave owner not of his wife. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Angelina Grimke Weld&amp;#039;s account of the treatment of slaves really made me realize the extent to which slaves were abused. They not only had to suffer through physical torture/abuse, but also dealt with verbal abuse, especially by their mistress in this case. I think people mostly focus on the abuse of slaves who worked outside, from the manual labor and the whippings, but I think that the &amp;quot;house-servants&amp;quot;, as Grimke calls them, also suffered just as much if not more. What I found odd was how the mistress claimed to be such a devout Christian and prayed and sang praises at the family altar daily, and then a couple of hours later, a slave was taken their to whipped inhumanely. It just didn&amp;#039;t make sense to me how someone could be so two-faced and hypocritical. I think Angelina Grimke Ward summed up the mindset of slave holders in one simple sentence: &amp;quot;Slaveholders think nothing of them, because they regard their slaves as &amp;#039;&amp;#039;property&amp;#039;&amp;#039; the mere instruments of their convenience and pleasure.&amp;quot; (Woloch, P. 217)--- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Louisa S. Cheeves McCord, “Review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 1853 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Personally, I liked McCords sarcasm, &amp;quot;Bravo! Mrs.Stowe! Your deductions are bold things, and override sense and reason with wonderful facility.&amp;quot; She really attacked Stowe pretty hard with this review, though. And, I find it slightly suprising that she would be so pro-slavery, being that she grew up in the North. It seems to me that she should have been a little sympathetic towards slaves. But, perhaps she had slaves in the North too, and it wasn&amp;#039;t much different to her than the South. I am curious to know if that may have been the case or not. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I also very much liked this piece. Louisa’s writing was smart, witty and fantastically snarky!  I thought this was a great form of rebuttal, undermining the integrity of the argument presented as well as the author by sarcastically saying that Stowe was only perpetuating common ideas and lies about slavery.  By over exaggerating several ideas in the book, such as: “The poor negro, astounded by the torrent of progress, which, bursting over the world, now hangs menacingly (for to the wild man is not civilization always menacing?) above him, would vainly follow with the stream, and is swept away in the current” Louisa discourages readers of Stowe to believe Stowes writing which Louisa shows to be fantastical and unreliable. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Boykin Chestnut’s diary, 1861 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Mary Chesnut, a woman of very high social standing, smoked opium? “It enables me to retain every particle of mind or sense or brains I ever have, &amp;amp; so quiets my nerves that I can calmly reason &amp;amp; take rational views of things otherwise maddening.” (pg 221) She was very clear why she used the drug, but these statements made me curious about the popularity of opium. Did her friends use it too? Was it expensive or hard to obtain? Was there any social stigma against it?  –Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also curious about Mary’s use of Opium.  I know opium was used as medicine before morphine was popular, however I wonder as to how it was used.  In her diary, Mary said: “I quickly took opium…”, does this mean it was still in its seed form or was it processed into a liquid or pill? Or was smoking an appropriate behavior for women?  I was also very much intrigued by Mary’s very confusing ideas about slavery.  In one section she writes that “ours is a monstrous system &amp;amp; wrong &amp;amp; iniquity” and in yet another that” my countrywomen are as pure as angels- tho surrounded by another race who are- the social evil!”  She appears to think slavery is wrong, however at the same time she retains a very racist attitude that seems to oppose her earlier statement.  Maybe she ought to lay off the opium before she begins to ponder theoretical issues... -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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Having a husband that was a lawyer and official in the Confederacy, Mary Boymin Chestnut may have visited Charleston which is port city having access to goods that may have been brought over from China which had just experienced the second opium war. Being in the upperclass, having disposable income, and having a rebellious nature (keeping a secret diary in a lock box to write whatever social commentaries she wants sounds a little rebellious for a lady at this time to me) and having an unhappy domestic life, seems to fit in with using opium in my opinion. She seemed like an interesting person to me, denouncing the clergy and arguing that slavery is a &amp;quot;curse&amp;quot; becuase of the bad that it brings out in people instead of the human rights that the slaves have as people. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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Like the previous posters I was rather confused/shocked by the casual mention of her using opium. I suppose I have the same question as above how often did people of her status use opium? Another thing that caught my attention was her saying “I was amused. Said Elizabeth was his /present/ wife.” this is an example of what we talked about earlier in the semester about “now wives” and such. –Megan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rose Williams’s Story in the Federal Writers’ Project Interviews, 1941. ==&lt;br /&gt;
The introduction to this narrative stated that it was in a slave woman’s best interest to have children because it decreased her likelihood of being sold. The benefits are not so clear in Rose Williams’s case because her owner did not let her choose her partner. I think this provides a good example to show that slavery could be a quid pro quo relationship. Rose’s owner did something nice for her, bought her along with her parents, and then used that as a bargaining tool to get what he wanted out of her. Of course the slaveholder always had the upper hand, but I think it is important to note that some bargaining occurred. As I was reading for another class, I came across a slave woman who remarked about her master: “I own him and he owns me.” The master-slave relationship was anything but simple.  –Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison&amp;#039;s statements and the second paragraph in this piece sums up slave women perfectly stating, &amp;quot;child-bearing increased her value as a slave...&amp;quot; (226). Slave women were less likely to be separated from their children because slave-owners wanted to keep the mother around for reprodution and to train her children to be the ideal slave for the master. But, in the case of Rose Williams, did she really profit from being sold alongside her parents? The slave-owners and slave relationship appeared to be a give and take, even though the owner normally won slaves learned from masters mistakes. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with both Allison and Megan, the master/slave relationship was not simple. Not only did the masters control the work that the slaves did but dictated their lives in general. Rose Williams&amp;#039; is a good example of this. It is an interesting relationship because though every aspect of her life was controlled, she still felt like still owed it to her Mr. Hawkins to be with the man who he chose for her. Mr. Hawkins would be getting more slaves out of the deal, but what would Rose be getting? I guess the better question would be, what wouldn&amp;#039;t Rose be getting? and that would be whipped. Rose states, &amp;quot;De nex&amp;#039; day de massa call me and tell me, &amp;quot;Woman, I&amp;#039;s pay big money for you and I&amp;#039;s done dat for de cause I wants yous to raise me chilllens. I&amp;#039;s put you to life with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn&amp;#039;t want whippin&amp;#039; at de stake, yous do what I wants.&amp;quot;&amp;quot; I think what stood out to me most in this reading is how Rose was treated. I realize that slaves were property, and owners could do what they wanted. But in my crazy mind, I imagined that slaves would do their work but would be able to have their own families or personal time once work was done, I didn&amp;#039;t think that these families were forced upon women as means to get more slaves for their owners. I guess I always just assumed that slave women wanted families of their own, this definitely wasn&amp;#039;t the case! --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I assumed the same thing Erin did about slave women wanting families of their own. I enjoyed reading Rose Williams&amp;#039;s story. Although her life was almost 100% dictated by her master, she found subtle ways to undermine his authority, like showing Rufus who was in charge when she was forced to live with him. Also, it was interesting to see the male/female relationship at work. Rose showed no respect to Rufus, and pretty much wore the pants in their relationship. But the male/female relationship was very different between Rose and her master. She did what he wanted, although she didn&amp;#039;t agree with it. It just goes to show how white superiority was so strong while the way Blacks interacted with one another was so different. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lucinda, a free woman, requests reenslavement, 1813 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Reading this document made me sad. I can only imagine the turmoil going through Lucinda, deciding to give up her freedom so that she could be with her husband. She must have loved him very much. But I wonder, Perhaps Lucinda did not only stay because of her husband. I mean, that was a big part of it, but she may also have been scared to leave the area that she lived in for so long. Her husband may have been the major factor, but maybe she just really did not want to go to Tennessee. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this was a really interesting, and unique, document- I&amp;#039;m sure there must not be many like it. Lucinda, like Kristina stated, must have deeply loved her husband- so much so that she requests to be reenslaved even when she has gained her freedom. Why would she do this? Even if she was reenslaved, there was always the possibility that her husband might be sold off and she would be separated from him then. Lucinda, however, takes this risk, which I think shows remarkable bravery and courage, as well as loyalty and devotion to her husband. I wonder what her previous experiences were with enslavement- maybe under her &amp;quot;late&amp;quot; mistress, Mary Matthews, she was treated fairly well and therefore had no real perception of how violent slavery under a different master or perhaps on a different plantation could be. I wonder whether this knowledge would have influenced her decision in any way? -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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It was very incredible to read that a slave would willingly be put back into slavery after being freed just to be with her husband. I think this qualifies as proof that love can make you stupid. This situation is a clear example of the many ways that slave owners could use family to keep control over slaves. While separating families (or the threat of it) and laws preventing freed blacks from living in the state controls blacks, but it also seems like it could be a check on other slave owners. If slave owners who considered the possibility of freeing their slaves after their deaths see that some of the freed slaves go right back to being slaves again, they’d probably be less inclined to bother. Also, freed blacks willingly entering slavery again helped reinforce the idea of paternalism. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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This petition was incredibly interesting in the fact that Lucinda refused freedom to be able to stay with her husband. She was asking to be re-enslaved since the state did not allow emancipated slaves to stay within the state. I find this remarkable. I would’ve thought she would have gone North, find work in whatever area she could and then save up some money to buy his freedom. However, she asked to be bought by her husband’s owner. I feel like this would probably have, as Taylor also mentions, convince white slave masters that slaves needed a father figure in their idea of paternalism. –Megan M&lt;br /&gt;
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== Connecticut woman asks other free black women to sign anti-slavery petitions, 1839 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Still, black abolitionist, along with other Philadelphia free women, forms “Female Publication Society” to promote the moral uplift of free and slave African Americans, 1861 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. Virginia Hayes Shepherd’s memories, 1937 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I found Mrs. Hayes recollection of slavery to be on the mark and amusing. The story of her youth is important to understanding what a former slave family had to go through after the Civil War, but the short paragraphs on Diana stood out the most to me. Diana appeared to be cunning and knew how to outwit the white man, when slaves were thought to be &amp;quot;child-like&amp;quot; Diana outsmarted her master. She knew she could not run away from slavery, but she knew how to manipulate it to her advantage and this proves any slave-owners theory on slaves as false in my eyes. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading Mrs. Hayes account, I feel like her experience as a slave was quite different from the typical slave experience. Hayes writes about her master, saying, &amp;quot;He never bothered to collect their [slaves] wages himself. Our master allowed his slaves so much freedom that we were called free niggers by slaves on other plantations.&amp;quot; (MP P. 181) Mrs. Hayes knew she had a decently good life for being a slave but was very aware of the plights of nearby slaves and was sympathetic to their troubles. The things Mrs. Hayes said about Diana and how she was treated by her master probably describes many female slaves lives. I thought it was interesting how the mistress was sympathetic towards Diana, after she was assaulted. I would have expected the opposite; that the mistress would have just ignored the problem. It was almost as though the mistress and Diana shared a similar experience, both being abused by the master/husband, sexually for Diana and physically for the mistress. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Thelma Jennings, “Sexual Exploitation of African American Slave Women,” 1990 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I agree with Thelma Jennings that African American slave women were sexually exploited.  Reading the stories they told of the atrocities imposed by white slave owners was horrifying and at sometimes difficult to read.  Jennings stated that the ideology of race played a key role and explained the view white slave owners.  Though some slaves were treated better than others, I think it’s important to remember that when slave owners bought a slave they became your property and were looked at as capital.  It was the idea of investing in your capital to produce more then they could make more money.   African American slaves - particularly women which Jenning’s referred to, were considered as an item not as a person.  Though it is twisted to think people are property, they did then, and it allowed white slave owners to take advantage of their slaves in any and every way they could.  -Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
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Thelma Jennings writes the sad tale of women who are sexually exploited. They were forced to have sex with other slaves so that there would me more slaves. Many white men gave no consideration to women who were married and would force them to have sex with others despite this. This is disturbing and I imagine that the women who were subject to this sexual abuse have a wealth of bitterness. I could never live under these conditions and I have respect for the endurance of these women. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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When Thelma Jennings wrote that slave women would go so far as to induce miscarriages and practice abortion in order &amp;quot;deprive&amp;quot; their owners of what they most wanted (more slaves in order to increase their productivity and therefore their wealth and social standing), I was astonished. I can understand it being a form of passive resistance, and slave women perhaps wanting to assert some control over their lives in any way that they could, but I can&amp;#039;t imagine being so resentful and bitter (perhaps that is not the best word, but I can&amp;#039;t think of a better one right now....) that a woman would take the life of her child. Did she feel it was in the child&amp;#039;s best interests- maybe to prevent him/her from suffering the way that she felt she was suffering? I&amp;#039;m not sure. That statement just totally blew me away- it made me realize how far some slave women were really willing to go in order to demonstrate, in their own way, their contempt and hatred of the situation they were in. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I noticed in one of the testimonies that a woman whose father was a white slaver owner and her mother a slave described her mother as being very light skinned and favored amongst the white. That seemed to be a pattern in the literature on the south that I have read that those who were light skinned were more likely to be exploited into having sexual relations with their masters. Would women like her and mulatto children have been treated differently by their fellow slaves? I wonder if they would have been resentful and bitter towards these women and children even though they were almost always the victims. -Emma Peck&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_10_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 10 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_10_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-29T05:08:24Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Angelina Grimké Weld, 1839, “The Cruel Mistress” */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Sarah Haynesworth Gayle, “An Alabama Diary,” 1828, 1833 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In Sarah Haynesworth Gayle’s diary she talks about how her slaves are no longer as obedient as they had been previously. She describes them as lazy and full of complaints. Even her favorite slave would not listen. What is interesting is that she takes this as an attack on herself, she states “I am unable to accommodate myself to the disagreeable change.” I’m not exactly sure what she was expected to do, or what she could do. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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Sarah Haynesworth’s diary entry where she was complaining about slave’s disobedience was written in 1828, I am having a hard time figuring out where this change in the slaves is coming from. In this context of time, this was before Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, but way after other attempted slave rebellions. So, I am curious as to where this change was coming from?  – Erin Sanderson &lt;br /&gt;
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Maybe Sarah Haynesworth Gayle&amp;#039;s means of discipline was not as threatening to the slaves as it had been under her parents and felt that they could rebel more strongly without a proactive master. Though I don&amp;#039;t think that their was goal to to be sold (a group that size may have had slave families), nothing is said about actions taken by mr or mrs Gayle to correct their behavior and Mrs. Gayle seems to use the sale of her slaves as vengeance to the poor behavior they had been exhibiting. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Angelina Grimké Weld, 1839, “The Cruel Mistress” ==&lt;br /&gt;
I think it&amp;#039;s interesting Angelina Grimke Weld, when referring to the abuse of the Cruel Mistress towards her house servants, points out that this woman had no shame in the abuse towards them.  Weld goes on and on about these horrible atrocities of the abuse and stated throughout this piece that this mistress was a respectable Christian women.  This made Weld as an abolitionist stand out as only a few.  The abuse of slaves was accepted and probably expected in order to remain in control of them in the eyes of a slave owner.  This slave holder without a doubt probably made a spectacle to make sure the slaves remained obedient.  This female mistress seems extremely temperamental.  The pious and vulgar language used against her slaves was likely her attempt to make sure they knew she was above them in every manor -race, class, and possibly better in Gods eyes as well.  I am curious to know how they thought God looked at a black person, did they think God perceived them as they did? -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I think it is interesting that this woman is such a paragon of virtue according to upper society and she is kind and generous to the poor but cannot see what a tyrant she is toward her slaves. It is also interesting to see a woman who id depicted in a cruel light. They are supposed to be the kinder gentler sex and here she is committing atrocities toward her slaves. It is an abuse of power and yet because they are property she cannot see it as such. I am sure that women all over the south commited cruel if not crueler acts then their husbands. Women sometimes are much crueler then men so I am sure they thought of new ways to punish their slaves all the time. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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Slavery obviously had a serious emotional and psychological impact on slaves, and the Grimké reading shows how slavery could impact whites. In the case described here a woman is cruel and abusive, faultfinding, and prone towards emotional outbursts that could be extended beyond her slaves and onto her family. There’s also the matter of hypocrisy in being accepted by the community as a good Christian in spite of these vicious faults. However, I’m curious what kind of psychological effects slavery had on men and woman of the South who did not believe in slavery, rare as they were, but who witnessed its horrors. Angelina says “one who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave (217).” But people like the Grimké sisters saw human beings, and constantly witnessing violence done to others can be quite a harrowing experience. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing that I was not quite sure about in this article was who slavery was doing the most damage to.  While the the descriptions of the beatings of the slaves did make me feel for them, it seemed to me that the point of the article was to show how bad slavery made the slave-owning women become.  Were the descriptions of the punishments that the slaves faced more horrendous due to the fact that a women was administering them?  Would this writing have been less effective if it had described a slave-owning male?   -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I like the question that John brought up in his post, I think that Angelina Grimke purposely depicted a slave owning female as opposed to male. At least in my opinion it seemed like it would be more shocking to Northern women to read of the cruelty being administered by their southern counterparts. I think her story might have been less shocking if she had depicted a tale of a cruel master. I noticed that the husband (if he existed) of the mistress in question was not mentioned during the story. Beating and whipping definitely appeared as punishments that would be associated with male slave owners and not mistresses.I was horrified that a supposedly gentile woman could administer such terrible beatings. It is much easier as the reader to conjure up an image of an evil slave owner not of his wife. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that Angelina Grimke Weld&amp;#039;s account of the treatment of slaves really made me realize the extent to which slaves were abused. They not only had to suffer through physical torture/abuse, but also dealt with verbal abuse, especially by their mistress in this case. I think people mostly focus on the abuse of slaves who worked outside, from the manual labor and the whippings, but I think that the &amp;quot;house-servants&amp;quot;, as Grimke calls them, also suffered just as much if not more. What I found odd was how the mistress claimed to be such a devout Christian and prayed and sang praises at the family altar daily, and then a couple of hours later, a slave was taken their to whipped inhumanely. It just didn&amp;#039;t make sense to me how someone could be so two-faced and hypocritical. I think Angelina Grimke Ward summed up the mindset of slave holders in one simple sentence: &amp;quot;Slaveholders think nothing of them, because they regard their slaves as &amp;#039;&amp;#039;property&amp;#039;&amp;#039; the mere instruments of their convenience and pleasure.&amp;quot; (Woloch, P. 217)--- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Louisa S. Cheeves McCord, “Review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 1853 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Personally, I liked McCords sarcasm, &amp;quot;Bravo! Mrs.Stowe! Your deductions are bold things, and override sense and reason with wonderful facility.&amp;quot; She really attacked Stowe pretty hard with this review, though. And, I find it slightly suprising that she would be so pro-slavery, being that she grew up in the North. It seems to me that she should have been a little sympathetic towards slaves. But, perhaps she had slaves in the North too, and it wasn&amp;#039;t much different to her than the South. I am curious to know if that may have been the case or not. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I also very much liked this piece. Louisa’s writing was smart, witty and fantastically snarky!  I thought this was a great form of rebuttal, undermining the integrity of the argument presented as well as the author by sarcastically saying that Stowe was only perpetuating common ideas and lies about slavery.  By over exaggerating several ideas in the book, such as: “The poor negro, astounded by the torrent of progress, which, bursting over the world, now hangs menacingly (for to the wild man is not civilization always menacing?) above him, would vainly follow with the stream, and is swept away in the current” Louisa discourages readers of Stowe to believe Stowes writing which Louisa shows to be fantastical and unreliable. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Boykin Chestnut’s diary, 1861 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Mary Chesnut, a woman of very high social standing, smoked opium? “It enables me to retain every particle of mind or sense or brains I ever have, &amp;amp; so quiets my nerves that I can calmly reason &amp;amp; take rational views of things otherwise maddening.” (pg 221) She was very clear why she used the drug, but these statements made me curious about the popularity of opium. Did her friends use it too? Was it expensive or hard to obtain? Was there any social stigma against it?  –Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also curious about Mary’s use of Opium.  I know opium was used as medicine before morphine was popular, however I wonder as to how it was used.  In her diary, Mary said: “I quickly took opium…”, does this mean it was still in its seed form or was it processed into a liquid or pill? Or was smoking an appropriate behavior for women?  I was also very much intrigued by Mary’s very confusing ideas about slavery.  In one section she writes that “ours is a monstrous system &amp;amp; wrong &amp;amp; iniquity” and in yet another that” my countrywomen are as pure as angels- tho surrounded by another race who are- the social evil!”  She appears to think slavery is wrong, however at the same time she retains a very racist attitude that seems to oppose her earlier statement.  Maybe she ought to lay off the opium before she begins to ponder theoretical issues... -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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Having a husband that was a lawyer and official in the Confederacy, Mary Boymin Chestnut may have visited Charleston which is port city having access to goods that may have been brought over from China which had just experienced the second opium war. Being in the upperclass, having disposable income, and having a rebellious nature (keeping a secret diary in a lock box to write whatever social commentaries she wants sounds a little rebellious for a lady at this time to me) and having an unhappy domestic life, seems to fit in with using opium in my opinion. She seemed like an interesting person to me, denouncing the clergy and arguing that slavery is a &amp;quot;curse&amp;quot; becuase of the bad that it brings out in people instead of the human rights that the slaves have as people. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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Like the previous posters I was rather confused/shocked by the casual mention of her using opium. I suppose I have the same question as above how often did people of her status use opium? Another thing that caught my attention was her saying “I was amused. Said Elizabeth was his /present/ wife.” this is an example of what we talked about earlier in the semester about “now wives” and such. –Megan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rose Williams’s Story in the Federal Writers’ Project Interviews, 1941. ==&lt;br /&gt;
The introduction to this narrative stated that it was in a slave woman’s best interest to have children because it decreased her likelihood of being sold. The benefits are not so clear in Rose Williams’s case because her owner did not let her choose her partner. I think this provides a good example to show that slavery could be a quid pro quo relationship. Rose’s owner did something nice for her, bought her along with her parents, and then used that as a bargaining tool to get what he wanted out of her. Of course the slaveholder always had the upper hand, but I think it is important to note that some bargaining occurred. As I was reading for another class, I came across a slave woman who remarked about her master: “I own him and he owns me.” The master-slave relationship was anything but simple.  –Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison&amp;#039;s statements and the second paragraph in this piece sums up slave women perfectly stating, &amp;quot;child-bearing increased her value as a slave...&amp;quot; (226). Slave women were less likely to be separated from their children because slave-owners wanted to keep the mother around for reprodution and to train her children to be the ideal slave for the master. But, in the case of Rose Williams, did she really profit from being sold alongside her parents? The slave-owners and slave relationship appeared to be a give and take, even though the owner normally won slaves learned from masters mistakes. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with both Allison and Megan, the master/slave relationship was not simple. Not only did the masters control the work that the slaves did but dictated their lives in general. Rose Williams&amp;#039; is a good example of this. It is an interesting relationship because though every aspect of her life was controlled, she still felt like still owed it to her Mr. Hawkins to be with the man who he chose for her. Mr. Hawkins would be getting more slaves out of the deal, but what would Rose be getting? I guess the better question would be, what wouldn&amp;#039;t Rose be getting? and that would be whipped. Rose states, &amp;quot;De nex&amp;#039; day de massa call me and tell me, &amp;quot;Woman, I&amp;#039;s pay big money for you and I&amp;#039;s done dat for de cause I wants yous to raise me chilllens. I&amp;#039;s put you to life with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn&amp;#039;t want whippin&amp;#039; at de stake, yous do what I wants.&amp;quot;&amp;quot; I think what stood out to me most in this reading is how Rose was treated. I realize that slaves were property, and owners could do what they wanted. But in my crazy mind, I imagined that slaves would do their work but would be able to have their own families or personal time once work was done, I didn&amp;#039;t think that these families were forced upon women as means to get more slaves for their owners. I guess I always just assumed that slave women wanted families of their own, this definitely wasn&amp;#039;t the case! --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I assumed the same thing Erin did about slave women wanting families of their own. I enjoyed reading Rose Williams&amp;#039;s story. Although her life was almost 100% dictated by her master, she found subtle ways to undermine his authority, like showing Rufus who was in charge when she was forced to live with him. Also, it was interesting to see the male/female relationship at work. Rose showed no respect to Rufus, and pretty much wore the pants in their relationship. But the male/female relationship was very different between Rose and her master. She did what he wanted, although she didn&amp;#039;t agree with it. It just goes to show how white superiority was so strong while the way Blacks interacted with one another was so different. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lucinda, a free woman, requests reenslavement, 1813 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Reading this document made me sad. I can only imagine the turmoil going through Lucinda, deciding to give up her freedom so that she could be with her husband. She must have loved him very much. But I wonder, Perhaps Lucinda did not only stay because of her husband. I mean, that was a big part of it, but she may also have been scared to leave the area that she lived in for so long. Her husband may have been the major factor, but maybe she just really did not want to go to Tennessee. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this was a really interesting, and unique, document- I&amp;#039;m sure there must not be many like it. Lucinda, like Kristina stated, must have deeply loved her husband- so much so that she requests to be reenslaved even when she has gained her freedom. Why would she do this? Even if she was reenslaved, there was always the possibility that her husband might be sold off and she would be separated from him then. Lucinda, however, takes this risk, which I think shows remarkable bravery and courage, as well as loyalty and devotion to her husband. I wonder what her previous experiences were with enslavement- maybe under her &amp;quot;late&amp;quot; mistress, Mary Matthews, she was treated fairly well and therefore had no real perception of how violent slavery under a different master or perhaps on a different plantation could be. I wonder whether this knowledge would have influenced her decision in any way? -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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It was very incredible to read that a slave would willingly be put back into slavery after being freed just to be with her husband. I think this qualifies as proof that love can make you stupid. This situation is a clear example of the many ways that slave owners could use family to keep control over slaves. While separating families (or the threat of it) and laws preventing freed blacks from living in the state controls blacks, but it also seems like it could be a check on other slave owners. If slave owners who considered the possibility of freeing their slaves after their deaths see that some of the freed slaves go right back to being slaves again, they’d probably be less inclined to bother. Also, freed blacks willingly entering slavery again helped reinforce the idea of paternalism. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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This petition was incredibly interesting in the fact that Lucinda refused freedom to be able to stay with her husband. She was asking to be re-enslaved since the state did not allow emancipated slaves to stay within the state. I find this remarkable. I would’ve thought she would have gone North, find work in whatever area she could and then save up some money to buy his freedom. However, she asked to be bought by her husband’s owner. I feel like this would probably have, as Taylor also mentions, convince white slave masters that slaves needed a father figure in their idea of paternalism. –Megan M&lt;br /&gt;
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== Connecticut woman asks other free black women to sign anti-slavery petitions, 1839 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Still, black abolitionist, along with other Philadelphia free women, forms “Female Publication Society” to promote the moral uplift of free and slave African Americans, 1861 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mrs. Virginia Hayes Shepherd’s memories, 1937 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I found Mrs. Hayes recollection of slavery to be on the mark and amusing. The story of her youth is important to understanding what a former slave family had to go through after the Civil War, but the short paragraphs on Diana stood out the most to me. Diana appeared to be cunning and knew how to outwit the white man, when slaves were thought to be &amp;quot;child-like&amp;quot; Diana outsmarted her master. She knew she could not run away from slavery, but she knew how to manipulate it to her advantage and this proves any slave-owners theory on slaves as false in my eyes. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading Mrs. Hayes account, I feel like her experience as a slave was quite different from the typical slave experience. Hayes writes about her master, saying, &amp;quot;He never bothered to collect their [slaves] wages himself. Our master allowed his slaves so much freedom that we were called free niggers by slaves on other plantations.&amp;quot; (MP P. 181) Mrs. Hayes knew she had a decently good life for being a slave but was very aware of the plights of nearby slaves and was sympathetic to their troubles. The things Mrs. Hayes said about Diana and how she was treated by her master probably describes many female slaves lives. I thought it was interesting how the mistress was sympathetic towards Diana, after she was assaulted. I would have expected the opposite; that the mistress would have just ignored the problem. It was almost as though the mistress and Diana shared a similar experience, both being abused by the master/husband, sexually for Diana and physically for the mistress. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Thelma Jennings, “Sexual Exploitation of African American Slave Women,” 1990 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I agree with Thelma Jennings that African American slave women were sexually exploited.  Reading the stories they told of the atrocities imposed by white slave owners was horrifying and at sometimes difficult to read.  Jennings stated that the ideology of race played a key role and explained the view white slave owners.  Though some slaves were treated better than others, I think it’s important to remember that when slave owners bought a slave they became your property and were looked at as capital.  It was the idea of investing in your capital to produce more then they could make more money.   African American slaves - particularly women which Jenning’s referred to, were considered as an item not as a person.  Though it is twisted to think people are property, they did then, and it allowed white slave owners to take advantage of their slaves in any and every way they could.  -Marsha&lt;br /&gt;
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Thelma Jennings writes the sad tale of women who are sexually exploited. They were forced to have sex with other slaves so that there would me more slaves. Many white men gave no consideration to women who were married and would force them to have sex with others despite this. This is disturbing and I imagine that the women who were subject to this sexual abuse have a wealth of bitterness. I could never live under these conditions and I have respect for the endurance of these women. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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When Thelma Jennings wrote that slave women would go so far as to induce miscarriages and practice abortion in order &amp;quot;deprive&amp;quot; their owners of what they most wanted (more slaves in order to increase their productivity and therefore their wealth and social standing), I was astonished. I can understand it being a form of passive resistance, and slave women perhaps wanting to assert some control over their lives in any way that they could, but I can&amp;#039;t imagine being so resentful and bitter (perhaps that is not the best word, but I can&amp;#039;t think of a better one right now....) that a woman would take the life of her child. Did she feel it was in the child&amp;#039;s best interests- maybe to prevent him/her from suffering the way that she felt she was suffering? I&amp;#039;m not sure. That statement just totally blew me away- it made me realize how far some slave women were really willing to go in order to demonstrate, in their own way, their contempt and hatred of the situation they were in. -Allison Godart&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_9_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 9 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_9_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-22T05:33:14Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Mary Ballou, “A Woman’s View of the Gold Rush,” 1852 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;General Questions&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chapter 7 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Emma Willard, “Matrimonial Risks,” 1815 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Emma is funny.  I also find it very endearing that she was very concerned for her sister&amp;#039;s matrimonial well-being.  This highlights the new role of women being the nurturing, caring, raising type.  Even as the old sister, she takes on the role of looking out for her younger sister.  Also, it definitely shows the changing view in women&amp;#039;s minds that they don&amp;#039;t necessarily have to be married. I enjoy how she herself ended up being a cougar who enters a doomed marriage. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Christine, I think this highlights a new role of women for the reasons Christine listed. I also think it shows how women perceived men at that time. I know that Emma had a bad experience with her husband who lost all of their money, so she had reason to be skeptical, but the stereotypes of men are very clear. The worries of Emma include, &amp;quot;the possibility of your lover&amp;#039;s seeing some object that he will consider more interesting than you,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;his business will occupy his attention&amp;quot;. These are very real fears of women at that time. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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It&amp;#039;s amazing how once women had more of a choice of who they were going to marry, how hesitant and cautious they became. From this essay, it also seems that maybe it was a good thing that they were. Emma married and some years later  her husband&amp;#039;s finances collapsed. When her younger sister had a suitor, she warned her to proceed with caution. Ironically, the advice she gave to her sister could have benefited her when a gold digger took all her money. Poor Emma.   -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like Emma Willard&amp;#039;s letter to her sister is paradoxical to the view of marriage a lot of women had during that time. This was a time when women were marrying for love and looking for romance in a relationship rather than status, etc. For such a time when women were finally able to have a choice in whom they married, Emma Willard was extremely pessimistic about her sister&amp;#039;s marriage. She may have just been trying to be honest with her sister about what would happen in her marriage, but I feel like she completely disregarded the romanticized view of marriage. She was more realistically aware of the possibilities of &amp;quot;your lover&amp;#039;s seeing some object that he will consider more interesting than you&amp;quot;(in regards to her sister&amp;#039;s husband) (P. 144). While she may have been harsh in showing her sister the realities of marriage, Emma was probably only trying to protect her sister from her own naivety and reverie. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Caroline Gilman, “The Deferential Wife,” 1838 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Gilman&amp;#039;s story to be tragic. In a time when marriage was romanticized and a young women felt leaving her &amp;quot;paternal home&amp;quot; was not something to be dread; the story of Gilman&amp;#039;s husband losing all of the romance from the beginning of their marriage is heart-wrenching. I also found that while strides had been made in married life, women such as Gilman, still bit their tongue instead of expressing an annoyance with their husband. The difference between the sexes is made apparent but I did enjoy Gilman stating she wanted marriage to remain romanticized. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like a lot of these expectations on women persisted well into the twentieth century.  To some extent, wasn&amp;#039;t this the sentiment (or the challenging of this sentiment) that was the basis for a lot of the marital humor that appeared on shows like I Love Lucy?  I think that the negotiation of a &amp;quot;companionate marriage,&amp;quot; or maybe more specifically, the meaning of marriage in general, continues in a lot of ways to today.  -erin b&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin. I felt there were a lot of modern connections in this article. I think Caroline&amp;#039;s idea that a woman must defer in a relationship to the man&amp;#039;s way of doing things could also be seen in any modern issue of Cosmo. -Allison Luthern &lt;br /&gt;
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Caroline Gilman annoyed me. She basically says when men offend their wife they are surprised by it and yet she is saying she keeps her mouth shut when he did something to offend her. How is he to know that his wife was offended if she does not tell him? Then she says that when he does something she does not like she tells him calmly and if unreformed she just accepts it. She gives contrary information. I guess I just do not like it when women accept their lot and move on. I am so glad I am not her. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Catharine Beecher, “System and Order,” 1841 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Were these books intended for women who had not gone to the womens academies at the time? or did Beecher just have a different view on how/when house work should be done which conflicted with what was taught at the schools? I found it interesting that unlike many previous articles we&amp;#039;ve read, the subject of equality is disregarded as a frivolous and impossible question to answer and &amp;quot;there would be no possible advantage in the decision.&amp;quot; isnt this a subtle way of saying that men and women should be equal? -Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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How did this get printed annually for 15 years? It seems alot like common sense so have a washing day for example. Or to have a trunk with things labeled in there for sewing. The last paragraph also seemed like a joke to me, &amp;quot;She can have regular periods for reading, walking, visiting...&amp;quot; it&amp;#039;s as if Beecher is giving them permission to do these things as if they needed it. -Megan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Catharine Sedgwick, “First to None,” 1828 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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When reading First to None I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Catharine Sedgwick. She spent her life surrounded by her friends and her family who she knew loved, admired, and respected her but she never felt like she was a first priority. She states, “I would not advise anyone to remain unmarried, for my experience has been a singularly happy one”. I think it is interesting that such a great writer of stories about the home and family had such a contradiction in her own life. Sedgwick was a successful author with close friends and family, and she was unhappy with her decision to remain unmarried. I can only imagine how the average women would handle a single existence in a society that was so focused on the family. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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As we discussed in class, there was an increase in unmarried ladies along the eastern seaboard, part of which was attributed to there being less men. In the case of Catharine Sedgwick, we see another part of that is a result of the idealization of marriage. Catharine bemoans her unmarried status, attributing it to her high standards and unwillingness to accept mediocre offers. Of course, Catharine could afford not to settle, as she had plenty of successful brothers who were willing to take care of her, at least early on. To what extent did the idealization of marriage impact how lower class women chose their husbands? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Connell Ayer, “The Widowed State,” 1832-33 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Here we see not only the dependence of women economically, at the time, on men but in her diary entries we also see the signs of the level of romantic love that was popular at this time. She appears to have a very close nit family, which we can see in her letters to and from her children. maybe i missed something, but why was there a decrease in remarriage that was previously more prevalent? did they think that marriage absolutely had to be a romantic engagement  and that the idea of a practical marriage was completely gone? - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that this piece was really depressing. First, she looses four children, then her husband, and not long after both her and her youngest daughter die. But, it was interesting to see through her entries how much she loved and missed her husband. It is a sign of the times that she missed her husband because of the love they shared between them. One question though: what were the meetings that she wrote about? Is it a code for church? -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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Widowhood in the 19th century has several similarities to widowhood in earlier centuries. Women were dependent on their husbands, and without them they could lose their households and be left to rely on distant relatives for support. In the case of Sarah Connell Ayer, this state and the grief over her husband left her miserable and angst-ridden (not exactly prime material for remarriage!). I’m left wondering what effects companionate marriage had on widowhood for both men and women. If women and men looked for partners on the basis of love and affection, did the loss of those partners create even more grief? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Kristina that one cannot feel sorry for Sarah Ayer. Sarah mentions that &amp;quot;many years had elapsed&amp;quot; since she saw her family, and when she traveled to see them she &amp;quot;knew none of the passengers on board&amp;quot; (Woloch, 158); The distant relationship from her parents and siblings and her unfamiliarity with those who travel show the restrictions placed on a woman dedicated to her role in the domestic sphere. Also, in the spring after her husband&amp;#039;s death, she spends a great deal of time (almost every entry in April) socializing with others in her community. This shows that the community provided support for her and, even with the loss of most of her immediate family, Sarah was not alone.  -Seth Mintzer   &lt;br /&gt;
 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chapter 8 – School and Mill&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eliza Ann Mulford, “Rules of the School,” 1814 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoy the Rules for the School.  They are exactly how I&amp;#039;d expect to to be at this time: focused on appearance, courteous sportment, industrious behavior, pious routines, and orderly habits.  They are raising ladies that will be raising their own children and tending to their husbands and must be their educations must be crafted in a certain way.  However, I would like to know what were rules at male schools of the time.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought that this was a really interesting piece. But, I wonder why Mulford copied the rules in the first place? Also, I thought it was very interesting that on the 5th rule it is said that if you missed church that you better have a very good excuse &amp;quot;at the day of Judgement.&amp;quot; Does that mean that when they died they had better have a good excuse to god why they didn&amp;#039;t make it to church that day? It seems like such a scary way of saying &amp;quot;don&amp;#039;t skip church.&amp;quot; And lastly, I just wanted to point out something that made me laugh: under the questions part, it is mostly just going back and asking if you followed all the rules, then at the very end it says, &amp;quot;have you eaten any green fruit during the week.&amp;quot; I just found that really random and out of place. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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The student checklist at the end of Mulford&amp;#039;s notebook entry depicts multiple components to an education that strengthen more than just one&amp;#039;s mind. The expectations for students to have &amp;quot;combed hair ... cleaned teeth ... [and] eaten green fruit&amp;quot; and for students to have &amp;quot;attended public worship ... [and] prayed to that God&amp;quot; emphasizes strengthening one&amp;#039;s body and soul, respectively, as well (Woloch, 164). These rules follow the guidelines that literature promoting female education, such as Benjamin Rush&amp;#039;s Thoughts on Female Education, had set forth during the Revolution. The other aspect of Eliza&amp;#039;s notebook I found interesting was that the religious structure taught at school was probably already practiced within the students&amp;#039; homes. Why was it necessary for the schools to reiterate behaviors that parents had already instilled? - Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Emma Willard, “A Rationale for Female Education,” 1819 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I think this work is interesting because Emma Willard&amp;#039;s goal was to educate women on the same subjects that were taught at men&amp;#039;s colleges.  She was profound in using such words as national prosperity, national and unparalleled glory, a nation wise, and to defend her liberties, to persuade members of the legislature.  I think she meant that it was essential to educate women in a way to maintain these liberties.  I think when she refered to the shackles that the revolution removed from the nation she also compared the shackles to that on women.  She made it evident that it was important to focus on educating women on moral and intellectual importance than frivolous things like dress and fashion.  I think she thought women had an obligation to their children, family, and themselves and she took it very seriously - so should those determining education of women. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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== Miss Burnham’s Report, “A Choctaw Mission School,” 1824 ==&lt;br /&gt;
As I was reading Miss Burnam&amp;#039;s Report, I kept thinking why would the parents of the Native American children bring them to this school?  Choctaws were more civilized into American cultures than before but I don&amp;#039;t think enough to want to send their children off with strangers that taught a different way of life.  I think those parents (in order to survive) knew this was the only way to protect their children and to merge them into American society in a peaceful way.  In Miss Burnam&amp;#039;s report, she mentioned difficulties with some of the children.  They would get emotional because they felt their brother or sister was not getting the same treatment as them.  The children were compassionate and concerned for their families.  Learning about God gave them a sense of being a sinner and being forgiven, and this made them feel guilty because in the eyes of what they were being taught, it meant their families were sinners.  One of the girls said her family was all bad and another girl said her brother was stupid and she worried about him.  I think these children were torn by what they learned as young children with their families and what was new and unknown.  When your young it sometimes makes it easier to adapt.  I think some of these girls adapted well, loved their teachers and attached themselves to them because that did not have their parents around.  The teacher became more like a parent to them.  - Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading this report, I compared Native Americans leaving their children at the school to parents leaving their children at college. In both cases it is hard for child and parent, and for a first time generation college student it is even more of an eye opener, much like the Native American children. They were unfamiliar with customs, scared to leave parents, felt they had different treatment than other family memebers, and turned to teachers (college case professors) for guidance and someone to rely on when away from home. I agree with Marsha the children were torn and unsure how to react in a new place with strangers. With time I feel the girls adjusted well and were able to learn and feel comfortable with their surroundings. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Letters from Teachers, “Reports on Western Schools,” 1847 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rules of the Mill from Lowell and Lancaster, 1820-1840 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Although the ability to seek work in a new town, independent of family could be seen as an advancement for young women of the early nineteenth-century, I thought the rules of the Lowell textile mills seemed to echo our old friend patriarchy. These female workers were clearly at the bottom of the power hierarchy beneath the factory management, overseer, and the boarding house keepers. They appeared to have very little freedom of movement or actions. I was curious if these rules would have been different if the Lowell factories had a male workforce. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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== Harriet Farley, “A Letter from Lowell,” 1844 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Voice of Industry, “A Spirit of Protest,” 1846 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chapter 9 – Western Frontiers&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Amelia Stewart Knight, “Crossing the Plains,” 1853 == &lt;br /&gt;
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My favorite part about this entry was when she throws in at the end &amp;quot;my eighth child was born&amp;quot; Did I miss something??? She doesn&amp;#039;t mention being pregnant throughout the entire thing (as far as I could tell)Just one entry of being sick all night. But then all of a sudden she is giving birth and crossing the columbia river on a canoe! As if the oregon trail wasn&amp;#039;t difficult enough she was pregnant and already had seven children? Oh my goodness I am horrified for her.-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Ballou, “A Woman’s View of the Gold Rush,” 1852 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved this letter to Selden. It was absolutly fascinating. I cannot believe she has a kitchen with no doors so the animals just walk in. I laughed when she said a rat jumped into bed with her. I think she is a very courageous woman to live the way she does. She is so hardworking I am amazed at the amount of activity she does in a day. I would be completely exhausted. I felt bad for her when she said that she was homesick. She talked to another woman who said she was so homesick she could die and I can image life was 20 times harder in California then it was in the more civilized east coast. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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While reading this I couldn&amp;#039;t help but wonder what her husband was doing while she was busy being a peace maker, cook, laundress, seamstress etc. What were the chances of her husband being successful in his venture? Could he have been making money off the gold rush? It seemed to me that while the men were wildly seeking gold the women were actually making a living in the various different business ventures that they began. I was amazed at the amount of responsibility she had in the community, I wonder what kind of life she lead back home and if it had any resemblance to her lifestyle in california. I can&amp;#039;t imagine that hogs would have been running through her kitchen though! Why did she leave though? Was it just meant to be a short venture to get more money? Her letter does show that women who lived in less settled communities on the frontier had more opportunities then there Eastern counterparts might have, however they lead very difficult lives. So who had it better?-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Petitions of the Cherokee Women’s Council on Removal, 1817, 1818 ==&lt;br /&gt;
The Cherokee women who composed this address spoke of the great injustice of being forced to move beyond the Mississippi. These women said that they have done what white Americans had wanted: many converted to Christianity, they farmed, and educated their children, sometimes sending them to missionary schools. However, I think these women’s action of addressing the male leaders about a political issue is more reminiscent of Native American women’s traditional gender roles before contact. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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When reading this document I wondered who the intended audience of this petition was.  The first petition mentions their &amp;quot;duty as mothers&amp;quot; in the first paragraph and the Cherokees children are mentioned constantly throughout both.  Could they be appealing more towards women, who would better understand their feelings of raising children, than towards men?  In the last paragraph of the second petition the council describes the assimilated white men who become their enemies partly by not caring about their wives and their children.  -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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This petition reveals some interesting things about women in the early 1800s; more specifically, Indian women. These women were able to go before their chiefs or &amp;quot;government&amp;quot; to protest the U.S. government&amp;#039;s taking of their land. The women made their case to the chiefs and elders of the tribe, evoking great emotion to argue their position. The way the women went to the chiefs, alone, shows that women&amp;#039;s privileges within the tribe were either the same or had increased in some capacity from the 1600s. What is even more interesting is how the women were able to persuade the tribe to keep their land. It shows the distinctiveness between Indian women and white women. I feel that if a white women had to make a petition to their government, it would be overlooked. But here, within the tribe, the women proved themselves to have power and an opinion within the tribe. Maybe this petition could have been used as an example, to encourage white women to speak up and to encourage governments to be more encouraging of women&amp;#039;s ideas and opinions. ----- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Winnemucca, “Life Among the Paiutes,” 1883 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think, personally, this may be the most interesting article I have read yet.  This memoir has an obvious purpose as it continually asserts Piute morality and equality to White Americans in deliberately showing Piute female virtue, lack of war-dances, productivity, and honor.  But it also has an obvious audience and secondary purpose as it educates (White Americans) about Piute life, such as female puberty rites, marriage rules, and council regulations. Because it has said audience, it is very enlightening and describes topics otherwise we might not have prior knowledge of, nor have access to, such as the ministration rites. I think this is a very valuable source for both women and Piute studies and can tell us about many social, political, and gender ideas that the Piute held during the 1800s. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== A Sioux Tale, “A Woman Kills Her Daughter” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This was the most amusing thing to read.  I love reading Native American tales because you can learn about their cultures and ways of thinking/lives and there always seems to be some sort of lesson.  The mother-in-law got what was coming disappearing in the abyss.  -Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked this tale. It was crazy but funny. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe the mother thought she could pretend to be the daughter; like the husband and brother wouldn&amp;#039;t know it was her and not the daughter. I wonder if this ever really happened in a Native American tribe? I&amp;#039;m sure she didn&amp;#039;t actually turn into a mermaid or the mother fall into the abyss but it seems like something that could be probable. The tale also seems to teach reinforce the lesson &amp;quot;blood is thicker than water.&amp;quot; People in today&amp;#039;s society could benefit from reading this. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Moral of story: If you’re going to be a cougar, don’t go after your son-in-law! No, but really, this was a very interesting story and it had several important points about Sioux cultural ideas that we can learn about with a little more research, in addition to describing gender rules and familial obligations.  First of all is the mother-in-law avoidance policy.  I know the Navajo have such a rule of mother-in-law avoidance out of respect and honor to the mother of the wife, and head matriarch, but I was not familiar with Sioux mother-in-law avoidance and would be interesting to study further to see if this is similar or different to the Navajo policy and its purpose. The second idea is the creation of a mermaid figure of the woman / half fish creature.  I am not sure what this means / represents within Sioux culture, but again I think this would be a very interesting research topic. As an Anthropology major, I would love to unpack this tale for its symbolic and cultural significance, but I think in general, this story has a lot to tell us about Sioux pastimes (swimming / swinging - for children only?), gender roles (birthing, nursing and preparing food), and family interaction (mother-in-law avoidance) that was thought important enough to be included in this story. –Elyse Lawrence&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_9_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 9 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_9_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-22T05:13:52Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Amelia Stewart Knight, “Crossing the Plains,” 1853 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;General Questions&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chapter 7 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Emma Willard, “Matrimonial Risks,” 1815 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Emma is funny.  I also find it very endearing that she was very concerned for her sister&amp;#039;s matrimonial well-being.  This highlights the new role of women being the nurturing, caring, raising type.  Even as the old sister, she takes on the role of looking out for her younger sister.  Also, it definitely shows the changing view in women&amp;#039;s minds that they don&amp;#039;t necessarily have to be married. I enjoy how she herself ended up being a cougar who enters a doomed marriage. - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Christine, I think this highlights a new role of women for the reasons Christine listed. I also think it shows how women perceived men at that time. I know that Emma had a bad experience with her husband who lost all of their money, so she had reason to be skeptical, but the stereotypes of men are very clear. The worries of Emma include, &amp;quot;the possibility of your lover&amp;#039;s seeing some object that he will consider more interesting than you,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;his business will occupy his attention&amp;quot;. These are very real fears of women at that time. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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It&amp;#039;s amazing how once women had more of a choice of who they were going to marry, how hesitant and cautious they became. From this essay, it also seems that maybe it was a good thing that they were. Emma married and some years later  her husband&amp;#039;s finances collapsed. When her younger sister had a suitor, she warned her to proceed with caution. Ironically, the advice she gave to her sister could have benefited her when a gold digger took all her money. Poor Emma.   -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like Emma Willard&amp;#039;s letter to her sister is paradoxical to the view of marriage a lot of women had during that time. This was a time when women were marrying for love and looking for romance in a relationship rather than status, etc. For such a time when women were finally able to have a choice in whom they married, Emma Willard was extremely pessimistic about her sister&amp;#039;s marriage. She may have just been trying to be honest with her sister about what would happen in her marriage, but I feel like she completely disregarded the romanticized view of marriage. She was more realistically aware of the possibilities of &amp;quot;your lover&amp;#039;s seeing some object that he will consider more interesting than you&amp;quot;(in regards to her sister&amp;#039;s husband) (P. 144). While she may have been harsh in showing her sister the realities of marriage, Emma was probably only trying to protect her sister from her own naivety and reverie. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Caroline Gilman, “The Deferential Wife,” 1838 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Gilman&amp;#039;s story to be tragic. In a time when marriage was romanticized and a young women felt leaving her &amp;quot;paternal home&amp;quot; was not something to be dread; the story of Gilman&amp;#039;s husband losing all of the romance from the beginning of their marriage is heart-wrenching. I also found that while strides had been made in married life, women such as Gilman, still bit their tongue instead of expressing an annoyance with their husband. The difference between the sexes is made apparent but I did enjoy Gilman stating she wanted marriage to remain romanticized. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like a lot of these expectations on women persisted well into the twentieth century.  To some extent, wasn&amp;#039;t this the sentiment (or the challenging of this sentiment) that was the basis for a lot of the marital humor that appeared on shows like I Love Lucy?  I think that the negotiation of a &amp;quot;companionate marriage,&amp;quot; or maybe more specifically, the meaning of marriage in general, continues in a lot of ways to today.  -erin b&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Erin. I felt there were a lot of modern connections in this article. I think Caroline&amp;#039;s idea that a woman must defer in a relationship to the man&amp;#039;s way of doing things could also be seen in any modern issue of Cosmo. -Allison Luthern &lt;br /&gt;
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Caroline Gilman annoyed me. She basically says when men offend their wife they are surprised by it and yet she is saying she keeps her mouth shut when he did something to offend her. How is he to know that his wife was offended if she does not tell him? Then she says that when he does something she does not like she tells him calmly and if unreformed she just accepts it. She gives contrary information. I guess I just do not like it when women accept their lot and move on. I am so glad I am not her. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Catharine Beecher, “System and Order,” 1841 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Were these books intended for women who had not gone to the womens academies at the time? or did Beecher just have a different view on how/when house work should be done which conflicted with what was taught at the schools? I found it interesting that unlike many previous articles we&amp;#039;ve read, the subject of equality is disregarded as a frivolous and impossible question to answer and &amp;quot;there would be no possible advantage in the decision.&amp;quot; isnt this a subtle way of saying that men and women should be equal? -Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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How did this get printed annually for 15 years? It seems alot like common sense so have a washing day for example. Or to have a trunk with things labeled in there for sewing. The last paragraph also seemed like a joke to me, &amp;quot;She can have regular periods for reading, walking, visiting...&amp;quot; it&amp;#039;s as if Beecher is giving them permission to do these things as if they needed it. -Megan M.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Catharine Sedgwick, “First to None,” 1828 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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When reading First to None I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Catharine Sedgwick. She spent her life surrounded by her friends and her family who she knew loved, admired, and respected her but she never felt like she was a first priority. She states, “I would not advise anyone to remain unmarried, for my experience has been a singularly happy one”. I think it is interesting that such a great writer of stories about the home and family had such a contradiction in her own life. Sedgwick was a successful author with close friends and family, and she was unhappy with her decision to remain unmarried. I can only imagine how the average women would handle a single existence in a society that was so focused on the family. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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As we discussed in class, there was an increase in unmarried ladies along the eastern seaboard, part of which was attributed to there being less men. In the case of Catharine Sedgwick, we see another part of that is a result of the idealization of marriage. Catharine bemoans her unmarried status, attributing it to her high standards and unwillingness to accept mediocre offers. Of course, Catharine could afford not to settle, as she had plenty of successful brothers who were willing to take care of her, at least early on. To what extent did the idealization of marriage impact how lower class women chose their husbands? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Connell Ayer, “The Widowed State,” 1832-33 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Here we see not only the dependence of women economically, at the time, on men but in her diary entries we also see the signs of the level of romantic love that was popular at this time. She appears to have a very close nit family, which we can see in her letters to and from her children. maybe i missed something, but why was there a decrease in remarriage that was previously more prevalent? did they think that marriage absolutely had to be a romantic engagement  and that the idea of a practical marriage was completely gone? - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that this piece was really depressing. First, she looses four children, then her husband, and not long after both her and her youngest daughter die. But, it was interesting to see through her entries how much she loved and missed her husband. It is a sign of the times that she missed her husband because of the love they shared between them. One question though: what were the meetings that she wrote about? Is it a code for church? -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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Widowhood in the 19th century has several similarities to widowhood in earlier centuries. Women were dependent on their husbands, and without them they could lose their households and be left to rely on distant relatives for support. In the case of Sarah Connell Ayer, this state and the grief over her husband left her miserable and angst-ridden (not exactly prime material for remarriage!). I’m left wondering what effects companionate marriage had on widowhood for both men and women. If women and men looked for partners on the basis of love and affection, did the loss of those partners create even more grief? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Kristina that one cannot feel sorry for Sarah Ayer. Sarah mentions that &amp;quot;many years had elapsed&amp;quot; since she saw her family, and when she traveled to see them she &amp;quot;knew none of the passengers on board&amp;quot; (Woloch, 158); The distant relationship from her parents and siblings and her unfamiliarity with those who travel show the restrictions placed on a woman dedicated to her role in the domestic sphere. Also, in the spring after her husband&amp;#039;s death, she spends a great deal of time (almost every entry in April) socializing with others in her community. This shows that the community provided support for her and, even with the loss of most of her immediate family, Sarah was not alone.  -Seth Mintzer   &lt;br /&gt;
 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chapter 8 – School and Mill&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eliza Ann Mulford, “Rules of the School,” 1814 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoy the Rules for the School.  They are exactly how I&amp;#039;d expect to to be at this time: focused on appearance, courteous sportment, industrious behavior, pious routines, and orderly habits.  They are raising ladies that will be raising their own children and tending to their husbands and must be their educations must be crafted in a certain way.  However, I would like to know what were rules at male schools of the time.  - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I also thought that this was a really interesting piece. But, I wonder why Mulford copied the rules in the first place? Also, I thought it was very interesting that on the 5th rule it is said that if you missed church that you better have a very good excuse &amp;quot;at the day of Judgement.&amp;quot; Does that mean that when they died they had better have a good excuse to god why they didn&amp;#039;t make it to church that day? It seems like such a scary way of saying &amp;quot;don&amp;#039;t skip church.&amp;quot; And lastly, I just wanted to point out something that made me laugh: under the questions part, it is mostly just going back and asking if you followed all the rules, then at the very end it says, &amp;quot;have you eaten any green fruit during the week.&amp;quot; I just found that really random and out of place. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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The student checklist at the end of Mulford&amp;#039;s notebook entry depicts multiple components to an education that strengthen more than just one&amp;#039;s mind. The expectations for students to have &amp;quot;combed hair ... cleaned teeth ... [and] eaten green fruit&amp;quot; and for students to have &amp;quot;attended public worship ... [and] prayed to that God&amp;quot; emphasizes strengthening one&amp;#039;s body and soul, respectively, as well (Woloch, 164). These rules follow the guidelines that literature promoting female education, such as Benjamin Rush&amp;#039;s Thoughts on Female Education, had set forth during the Revolution. The other aspect of Eliza&amp;#039;s notebook I found interesting was that the religious structure taught at school was probably already practiced within the students&amp;#039; homes. Why was it necessary for the schools to reiterate behaviors that parents had already instilled? - Seth Mintzer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Emma Willard, “A Rationale for Female Education,” 1819 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I think this work is interesting because Emma Willard&amp;#039;s goal was to educate women on the same subjects that were taught at men&amp;#039;s colleges.  She was profound in using such words as national prosperity, national and unparalleled glory, a nation wise, and to defend her liberties, to persuade members of the legislature.  I think she meant that it was essential to educate women in a way to maintain these liberties.  I think when she refered to the shackles that the revolution removed from the nation she also compared the shackles to that on women.  She made it evident that it was important to focus on educating women on moral and intellectual importance than frivolous things like dress and fashion.  I think she thought women had an obligation to their children, family, and themselves and she took it very seriously - so should those determining education of women. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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== Miss Burnham’s Report, “A Choctaw Mission School,” 1824 ==&lt;br /&gt;
As I was reading Miss Burnam&amp;#039;s Report, I kept thinking why would the parents of the Native American children bring them to this school?  Choctaws were more civilized into American cultures than before but I don&amp;#039;t think enough to want to send their children off with strangers that taught a different way of life.  I think those parents (in order to survive) knew this was the only way to protect their children and to merge them into American society in a peaceful way.  In Miss Burnam&amp;#039;s report, she mentioned difficulties with some of the children.  They would get emotional because they felt their brother or sister was not getting the same treatment as them.  The children were compassionate and concerned for their families.  Learning about God gave them a sense of being a sinner and being forgiven, and this made them feel guilty because in the eyes of what they were being taught, it meant their families were sinners.  One of the girls said her family was all bad and another girl said her brother was stupid and she worried about him.  I think these children were torn by what they learned as young children with their families and what was new and unknown.  When your young it sometimes makes it easier to adapt.  I think some of these girls adapted well, loved their teachers and attached themselves to them because that did not have their parents around.  The teacher became more like a parent to them.  - Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading this report, I compared Native Americans leaving their children at the school to parents leaving their children at college. In both cases it is hard for child and parent, and for a first time generation college student it is even more of an eye opener, much like the Native American children. They were unfamiliar with customs, scared to leave parents, felt they had different treatment than other family memebers, and turned to teachers (college case professors) for guidance and someone to rely on when away from home. I agree with Marsha the children were torn and unsure how to react in a new place with strangers. With time I feel the girls adjusted well and were able to learn and feel comfortable with their surroundings. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Letters from Teachers, “Reports on Western Schools,” 1847 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Rules of the Mill from Lowell and Lancaster, 1820-1840 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Although the ability to seek work in a new town, independent of family could be seen as an advancement for young women of the early nineteenth-century, I thought the rules of the Lowell textile mills seemed to echo our old friend patriarchy. These female workers were clearly at the bottom of the power hierarchy beneath the factory management, overseer, and the boarding house keepers. They appeared to have very little freedom of movement or actions. I was curious if these rules would have been different if the Lowell factories had a male workforce. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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== Harriet Farley, “A Letter from Lowell,” 1844 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== The Voice of Industry, “A Spirit of Protest,” 1846 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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 &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Chapter 9 – Western Frontiers&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
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== Amelia Stewart Knight, “Crossing the Plains,” 1853 == &lt;br /&gt;
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My favorite part about this entry was when she throws in at the end &amp;quot;my eighth child was born&amp;quot; Did I miss something??? She doesn&amp;#039;t mention being pregnant throughout the entire thing (as far as I could tell)Just one entry of being sick all night. But then all of a sudden she is giving birth and crossing the columbia river on a canoe! As if the oregon trail wasn&amp;#039;t difficult enough she was pregnant and already had seven children? Oh my goodness I am horrified for her.-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Ballou, “A Woman’s View of the Gold Rush,” 1852 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I loved this letter to Selden. It was absolutly fascinating. I cannot believe she has a kitchen with no doors so the animals just walk in. I laughed when she said a rat jumped into bed with her. I think she is a very courageous woman to live the way she does. She is so hardworking I am amazed at the amount of activity she does in a day. I would be completely exhausted. I felt bad for her when she said that she was homesick. She talked to another woman who said she was so homesick she could die and I can image life was 20 times harder in California then it was in the more civilized east coast. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Petitions of the Cherokee Women’s Council on Removal, 1817, 1818 ==&lt;br /&gt;
The Cherokee women who composed this address spoke of the great injustice of being forced to move beyond the Mississippi. These women said that they have done what white Americans had wanted: many converted to Christianity, they farmed, and educated their children, sometimes sending them to missionary schools. However, I think these women’s action of addressing the male leaders about a political issue is more reminiscent of Native American women’s traditional gender roles before contact. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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When reading this document I wondered who the intended audience of this petition was.  The first petition mentions their &amp;quot;duty as mothers&amp;quot; in the first paragraph and the Cherokees children are mentioned constantly throughout both.  Could they be appealing more towards women, who would better understand their feelings of raising children, than towards men?  In the last paragraph of the second petition the council describes the assimilated white men who become their enemies partly by not caring about their wives and their children.  -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Winnemucca, “Life Among the Paiutes,” 1883 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think, personally, this may be the most interesting article I have read yet.  This memoir has an obvious purpose as it continually asserts Piute morality and equality to White Americans in deliberately showing Piute female virtue, lack of war-dances, productivity, and honor.  But it also has an obvious audience and secondary purpose as it educates (White Americans) about Piute life, such as female puberty rites, marriage rules, and council regulations. Because it has said audience, it is very enlightening and describes topics otherwise we might not have prior knowledge of, nor have access to, such as the ministration rites. I think this is a very valuable source for both women and Piute studies and can tell us about many social, political, and gender ideas that the Piute held during the 1800s. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== A Sioux Tale, “A Woman Kills Her Daughter” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This was the most amusing thing to read.  I love reading Native American tales because you can learn about their cultures and ways of thinking/lives and there always seems to be some sort of lesson.  The mother-in-law got what was coming disappearing in the abyss.  -Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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I really liked this tale. It was crazy but funny. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe the mother thought she could pretend to be the daughter; like the husband and brother wouldn&amp;#039;t know it was her and not the daughter. I wonder if this ever really happened in a Native American tribe? I&amp;#039;m sure she didn&amp;#039;t actually turn into a mermaid or the mother fall into the abyss but it seems like something that could be probable. The tale also seems to teach reinforce the lesson &amp;quot;blood is thicker than water.&amp;quot; People in today&amp;#039;s society could benefit from reading this. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Moral of story: If you’re going to be a cougar, don’t go after your son-in-law! No, but really, this was a very interesting story and it had several important points about Sioux cultural ideas that we can learn about with a little more research, in addition to describing gender rules and familial obligations.  First of all is the mother-in-law avoidance policy.  I know the Navajo have such a rule of mother-in-law avoidance out of respect and honor to the mother of the wife, and head matriarch, but I was not familiar with Sioux mother-in-law avoidance and would be interesting to study further to see if this is similar or different to the Navajo policy and its purpose. The second idea is the creation of a mermaid figure of the woman / half fish creature.  I am not sure what this means / represents within Sioux culture, but again I think this would be a very interesting research topic. As an Anthropology major, I would love to unpack this tale for its symbolic and cultural significance, but I think in general, this story has a lot to tell us about Sioux pastimes (swimming / swinging - for children only?), gender roles (birthing, nursing and preparing food), and family interaction (mother-in-law avoidance) that was thought important enough to be included in this story. –Elyse Lawrence&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_8_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 8 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_8_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-15T06:25:25Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* SC feme sole trader acts, 1712, 1744 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Antenuptial contract, Mass, 1653 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised when reading about the antenuptial contracts. I have never heard of these contracts existing during this time period. I thought that these contracts were a more &amp;quot;modern&amp;quot; idea. The antenuptial contracts during this time made a lot more sense to me after I read some of the stipulations that they entailed. For instance, Woloch says that a well-off father could seek an antenuptial contract for his daughter. Although this contract would protect the women and her property, it still was initiated by a man. In the case of Ann Allen, her children (from a previous husband) could retain their inheritances upon her new husband&amp;#039;s death. What if her children had reached adulthood prior to Mr. Jewett&amp;#039;s death? -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I also had never heard of these &amp;quot;antenuptial contracts.&amp;quot;  It seemed very fitting thar some women who came into marriage with something of their own would want to keep it, especially some fathers looking after their daughter&amp;#039;s interests.  However, how common was it that children or wives wouldn&amp;#039;t receive their &amp;quot;portions,&amp;quot; as in the case Bozoon Allen and how likely would it be for their inheritance to be recovered? - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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The use of antenuptial contracts seems obvious but is actually a huge shift from how property used to be treated in the patriarchal society. I think it is interesting that the men agree to the terms, it shows not only a shift in the female/wife mindset but a shift in the male/husband mindset as well. So what changed to make this happen? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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== New England Divorce, CT, 1655-1678; MD, 1680 ==&lt;br /&gt;
What caught my attention the most in this piece was the case of Robert Wade (1657). First, I love how they write, &amp;quot;in refrence to his wives unworthy, sinfull, yea, unnatural cariage towards him...&amp;quot; As if the woman is a complete monster. And, in the other cases (which were all of women divorcing their husbands), they do not say anything about the husbands were so horrible just that they did something wrong or have been gone, etc. and that is it. Obviously, the courts must have thought that if a woman deserted her husband then that is much more horrible than if the man deserted his wife. &lt;br /&gt;
The other thing that caught my eye was the fact that this is a man asking for a divorce, and all the others are women asking for the divorce. I would bet that the men may have thought it beneath them to ask for a divorce, even if they wanted it, and that is why man asking for a divorce is much less common. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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The fact that Connecticut permitted divorces does extend some legal protection for abandoned married women. However, it is obvious that the Connecticut legislature was more sympathetic to men seeking this divorce-by-neglect rather than women. When Goody Beckwith and Hanna Huit requested a divorce, the legislature required others to testify that the women’s story of their husbands’ desertion was true. However, when Robert Wade=2 0requested a divorce from his runaway wife, the legislature was horrified, obviously sympathetic, and did not bother to double-check his story. A modern observer should not declare the new legal action of divorce a total triumph for the rights of women. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I find the Connecticut divorce cases to be really interesting. By today&amp;#039;s standards these all seem like obvious reasons for divorce. Abandonment, for example, would be a justified reason for divorce after 7 years. I can&amp;#039;t help but think of all those individuals everywhere else in America who had been abandoned but were still considered married. -Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Kristina, I agree that men probably thought it was beneath them to ask for divorce. However, I also think that it would be a lot harder for an abandoned women to survive without a husband (she would probably be living in poverty) then it would be for a man to survive without his wife. This gives women incentive to get a divorce, that way they could remarry. -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how similar the grounds for divorce in New England and modern divorce are. It seems that in this area many of the overall concepts and foundations are the same. The reasons seem to be standard and the only difference is that there was a double standard. They were obvious grounds for divorce if the indiscretions were committed by the wife and not the husband. Considering the rest of the country Connecticut was ahead of the game and practically modern! I wonder why that was that New England offered a more absolute divorce--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== SC feme sole trader acts, 1712, 1744 ==&lt;br /&gt;
It was interesting to read about the feme sole laws in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Pennsylvania allowed women whose husbands would not support them to become feme soles. That was definitely a positive gain for women whose husbands deserted them or were bankrupt. It makes sense that the women may have had to use their earnings to pay off their deadbeat husband&amp;#039;s debts because that is basically like marriage today. If one spouse goes into debt then they are both in debt. I also found in interesting that South Carolina did not specify who could or could not be a feme sole. Of course, a married woman who wanted to become a feme sole would have needed to have written permission from their husband. Still, the idea of allowing a married woman to participate in business shows that South Carolina was pretty liberal at this time. I find it funny that South Carolina was liberal back then, but isn&amp;#039;t exactly known for being liberal today. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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We discussed in class that all of the colonies/states eventually allowed for some level of divorce or separation, except for South Carolina. However, South Carolina did have some of the most liberal laws for married women. They could engage in business independent of their husbands, and they could sue and be sued, much like unmarried women as feme soles. Unlike in other colonies, none of this was dependent on the state of their marriage. Husbands didn’t have to be unsupportive or absent for wives to be involved in business. I wonder if the more open laws for married women in South Carolina played a part in its lack of divorce laws. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting how South Carolina allowed women to stand alone within the trade community. While being responsible for &amp;quot;their business debts&amp;quot; may seem less than pleasurable for women, it was a definite breakthrough for women. (P. 77) The idea that women had an identity away from their husbands/males was a feat within itself. Women were recognized as individuals, ones who could be held responsible for their own actions in the trade community. It surprised me that South Carolina would be the one to pass this law about &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Femme Soles&amp;#039;&amp;#039; in trading, since their divorce laws were strict and almost non-existent. ----- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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The difference in the divorce laws as well as the laws for Feme Soles in the different states is very interesting. I thought that it really echos the idea that the colonies were not unified and existed as sole entities independent of the other colonies. These laws seemed to exemplify the fact that the the government in south carolina seemed to be more concerned with a womans marital status even if they were business women. I think if they were aligned somehow with a man they were less of a threat. --Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mass, 1675-1680 – Women in county courts ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In the Malefactors and Complaints there seems to be a general way of punishment.  You were either whipped, sent away, and or had to pay a fine.  The women seemed to be treated much more harshly then men and they tended to be made an example of, in particular Margaret Brewster.  It seems harsh for a women to be stripped from waste down, tide to a cart and to have received 20 stripes for coming to church not looking appropriate for the occasion.  The way she was described she almost sounds as if she&amp;#039;s homeless.  John Man was sentenced with bond of 200 lbs for his good behavior for beating of his servant but received no stripes (which would have seemed fitting for what he had done to her.)  Then again she was a woman and a servant though it does state she was set free from her indenture. - Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it interesting that William Backway and his wife were punished for &amp;quot;fornication before theire marriage&amp;quot;. They got married so who cares? I also thought it was interesting that stealing and fornication had the same punishment being striped 15 times. Now stealing is much more of a big deal then having an affair. I agree with Marsha, the men had it easier. The woman has sex and is whipped the men have sex and they pay a fine. That is so ridiculous. It takes two to have a baby. They should have the same punishment. - LeAnn&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how, in this section, there was mention of Rebecca Auborne, who was sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine for &amp;quot;committing Fornication with Samuel Kemble having a bastard Childe&amp;quot;. In the next paragraph, however, Samuel Kemble is ordered to pay to Rebecca &amp;quot;two Shillings six pence&amp;quot; per week to support the child.(p.81) I wonder how the child, or any child who is born in such a circumstance, would be treated in colonial America? Would they be &amp;quot;assimilated&amp;quot; with any future children their mother might have with her husband, or would they be forever treated as &amp;quot;outcasts&amp;quot; and/or not accepted? -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the names in these Malefactors and Complainants, it seemed like every other women was named Elizabeth or Mary (in the wills and antenuptials  too) but then out of nowhere there were names like Mercy, Goody, Experience . How common were these names? --Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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== Virginia, 1642, NY 1721-1759 – Widows, Wills and Dower Rights ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting reading the wills of men. The order of recipients in the wills caught my eye. The majority of the men left their belongings first to their sons, his daughters next, followed by the wife. In very few cases was the wife mentioned first and in them if the wife married someone else the law would decide what she would receive and she would receive very little of the estate. - Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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The wills aren&amp;#039;t all too surprising... sons, daughters, then wife. Typical.  My question is how were wills left? Was there a person they were given to in town or did they just keep them handy at the bedside? - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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One line I found most interesting in one of the wills was in “A Virginia Will, 1642” by George Travellor. The particular line said, “And to my daughter Elizabeth att her day of Marriage or otherwise att Fifteene yeares of Age.” I know we talked about the early marriages of the times but this brought attention to it. It seemed Elizabeth’s father assumed she would be married by the age of 15. I have a random/rather dumb question at the bottom of some of the Wills it said “Proved, November, 1755.” or something like that, was that the date of death/date the will was read? Sometimes it was days after the first date mentioned in the will and other times it was years after like Francis Bassett’s says “this 16 of December, 1749…” but at the end it says “Proved, June 14, 1758.” –Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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== Women’s Estates, Mass, 1664, NY 1747-1759 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Comparing these women&amp;#039;s wills to the men&amp;#039;s in the previous articles, it is obvious that there is a clear distinction. The women commonly left their property to their daughters first and then their sons. I think the women tended to be biased towards the females of their family because they wanted them to receive as much as possible for they would not get to own very much of their own throughout their life. The boys on the other hand would have many rights and own real property of their own. I liked the fact that the women were trying to give the daughters as much as they could after their death.- Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the wills of women to be rather interesting. After reading the previous articles I questioned whether women wrote them or not, seeing as their property was that of their husbands. Women did give to their daughers first and then their sons, but what I found different about women&amp;#039;s wills was they were more personal. Women wanted to make sure their children and in some cases grandchildren were taken care of down to the slightest detail of giving a daughter &amp;quot;a set of gold buttons &amp;quot;to the value of a Pistole.&amp;quot;&amp;quot;(p. 89). They took care of the smallest details and thought about the family more than themselves. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Megan that women&amp;#039;s wills seem much more personal, and the attention to detail is amazing. I think it is also interesting to see hoe wills can express what people value most, even today. I especially liked the will of Jane Jones, written in July 1756. In it, she leaves 5 shillings to her son, John Jones, and then goes on to mention her daughters and what she is bequeathing to them. The list for her daughters is much more detailed and personal. Of course, as the editor mentions, she could be compensating her daughters for the neglect they may have felt from their father&amp;#039;s will (much of what would have probably gone to his son). Or, she simply could have had a closer bond and attachment to her daughters. I think wills in general, and especially those of women of this time period, reveal quite a lot at the same time that they pose quite a few questions that we aren&amp;#039;t really sure about or cannot answer definitively. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this source was a good example of what was stated in the Property and Personalism article, showing women giving items within their will to their children and grandchildren based on need and merit as well as showing a preference to female dependants, who would by nature need more for support and having less legal rights.  I also found it interesting that in the New York will of Anna Pritchard specifically states where she wishes to be buried, who the pall bearers ought to be and also the followers, and in Catharine Bromley also of New York leaves her estate in charge of funeral charges and  only afterward would her assets be split.  This reflects what was stated in the article about women having thought more about mortality due to their constant state of fear due to childbirth, that this woman would have thought more about her death and would describe how her funeral ought to be – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It was interesting to learn that women&amp;#039;s deed of gifts and wills were quite different than men in Petersburg.  Not only was it out of the ordinary for women to have wills but very interesting to read about what they willed and who they willed it to.  Mary Bolling is interesting because she included some of her heirs but excluded others such as her grandson Thomas Shore.  The idea that women played favorites and designated who got what instead of most men&amp;#039;s wills dividing everything equally among their heirs.  I can&amp;#039;t help but think about my grandmother when I read this chapter in the book.  As we went through her things after she passed, we found little notes with specific names on it willed to that person.  These items were not actually in her will but they meant enough in her mind to give it to a specific person.  Though the women in Petersburg were in a different time than my grandmother, it gives us a sense of women&amp;#039;s thought process.  The thought of who would most benefit from receiving that gift, who was grandma&amp;#039;s favorite, or who asked first?  Women showed their nurturing abilities by denoting some security for their children. Men&amp;#039;s wills did not show these specific details. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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On my other post I had remarked that I found it interesting that women wrote wills during the nineteenth century but through this article I found more interesting how light-hearted women were about wills. &amp;quot;It may have been that women, who looked at death with every pregnancy...had less trouble making preparations for their dying.&amp;quot;(p. 134). This statement proved that although women seemed to have more trouble with finances in Petersburg they were willing to be prepared and to protect their assets for their heirs. Women are typically seen as being more caring and watchful over families and through the wills in this article I find it to be true over men. Men just wrote out property (moveable or not) and to whom, women gave thought to the process; was it due to the fact that they were more nurturing or prepared? Did women face death more often than men of the nineteenth century?  -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this article was fascinating. The author described a period of time when single women had more control over property. I was curious about how men reacted to this new development. Thomas Jefferson was an adolescent when his father died. He received property and slaves from his father, but due to his young age, his mother had some control over her husband’s estate. Young Jefferson was not too happy about this situation and I do not think it was a coincidence that the rest his life was void of a strong attachment to his mother and any assertion of legal rights for women.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised to read that women played favorites much more then men when they wrote their wills. Then I thought about it and men almost always gave their land to their sons which is a sort of favoritism. I would expect women to give other women more then men because women live in an often precarious situation. They may not have enough money to live on or may have an unhappy marriage. All women feel the constraints society puts on them. It makes sense for women to leave their daughters more because men have most of the power. - LeAnn T.&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it interesting that women, unlike men, divided property unevenly between their heirs and gave special provisions for slaves in their wills. They were influenced by particular attachments and personal day to day interactions. I get the feeling that this practice in female wills didn’t help men’s opinions of women. It probably helped reinforce women as indulgent, emotional, irrational, and sentimental, which seemingly made them incapable of taking part in more level headed and intellectual pursuits. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It surprised me to read how women who were spinsters and windows were given many rights. I feel like it was a step in the right direction in regards to women&amp;#039;s rights. Women were not left helpless, but were given the opportunity to make a life for themselves, without reliance on men. I feel that women gained more self confidence through this new idea of self-dependence. For example, Mary Bolling stood her ground against the British invasion of her house, and also how she stood up against her son-in-law who was attempting to take more property from her. Although single women had more rights, I feel that it was easier for women to be taken advantage of in the business world. While they were given more privileges, there were still restrictions placed on them, so it probably made it easier for men in the business world to use those restrictions to advance themselves and cheat the women. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article on Property and personalism very interesting.  The comparisons from the male use of the will to equally divide assets for the purpose of financial support to women’s selective gift giving based on personal merit and need, including for slaves was very enlightening on how wills were used and who benefited from them and why. I agree with Marsha’s comment about how this is still common with grandmothers and hand selecting items to give, as this was the case with my own. Does this help reflect similarities in gender roles to today’s women? I think it’s an interesting idea for comparison.  I would have liked if the author was clearer about the historical reasons there was increase in women’s legal activities up to 1860.  How does the increase in population affect this increase in numbers of active legal women? Changes about education, legal rights, gender roles?  I think I would have liked more facts in addition to the analysis of sentimentality. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_8_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 8 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_8_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-15T06:15:42Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* New England Divorce, CT, 1655-1678; MD, 1680 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Antenuptial contract, Mass, 1653 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised when reading about the antenuptial contracts. I have never heard of these contracts existing during this time period. I thought that these contracts were a more &amp;quot;modern&amp;quot; idea. The antenuptial contracts during this time made a lot more sense to me after I read some of the stipulations that they entailed. For instance, Woloch says that a well-off father could seek an antenuptial contract for his daughter. Although this contract would protect the women and her property, it still was initiated by a man. In the case of Ann Allen, her children (from a previous husband) could retain their inheritances upon her new husband&amp;#039;s death. What if her children had reached adulthood prior to Mr. Jewett&amp;#039;s death? -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I also had never heard of these &amp;quot;antenuptial contracts.&amp;quot;  It seemed very fitting thar some women who came into marriage with something of their own would want to keep it, especially some fathers looking after their daughter&amp;#039;s interests.  However, how common was it that children or wives wouldn&amp;#039;t receive their &amp;quot;portions,&amp;quot; as in the case Bozoon Allen and how likely would it be for their inheritance to be recovered? - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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The use of antenuptial contracts seems obvious but is actually a huge shift from how property used to be treated in the patriarchal society. I think it is interesting that the men agree to the terms, it shows not only a shift in the female/wife mindset but a shift in the male/husband mindset as well. So what changed to make this happen? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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== New England Divorce, CT, 1655-1678; MD, 1680 ==&lt;br /&gt;
What caught my attention the most in this piece was the case of Robert Wade (1657). First, I love how they write, &amp;quot;in refrence to his wives unworthy, sinfull, yea, unnatural cariage towards him...&amp;quot; As if the woman is a complete monster. And, in the other cases (which were all of women divorcing their husbands), they do not say anything about the husbands were so horrible just that they did something wrong or have been gone, etc. and that is it. Obviously, the courts must have thought that if a woman deserted her husband then that is much more horrible than if the man deserted his wife. &lt;br /&gt;
The other thing that caught my eye was the fact that this is a man asking for a divorce, and all the others are women asking for the divorce. I would bet that the men may have thought it beneath them to ask for a divorce, even if they wanted it, and that is why man asking for a divorce is much less common. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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The fact that Connecticut permitted divorces does extend some legal protection for abandoned married women. However, it is obvious that the Connecticut legislature was more sympathetic to men seeking this divorce-by-neglect rather than women. When Goody Beckwith and Hanna Huit requested a divorce, the legislature required others to testify that the women’s story of their husbands’ desertion was true. However, when Robert Wade=2 0requested a divorce from his runaway wife, the legislature was horrified, obviously sympathetic, and did not bother to double-check his story. A modern observer should not declare the new legal action of divorce a total triumph for the rights of women. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I find the Connecticut divorce cases to be really interesting. By today&amp;#039;s standards these all seem like obvious reasons for divorce. Abandonment, for example, would be a justified reason for divorce after 7 years. I can&amp;#039;t help but think of all those individuals everywhere else in America who had been abandoned but were still considered married. -Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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In response to Kristina, I agree that men probably thought it was beneath them to ask for divorce. However, I also think that it would be a lot harder for an abandoned women to survive without a husband (she would probably be living in poverty) then it would be for a man to survive without his wife. This gives women incentive to get a divorce, that way they could remarry. -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how similar the grounds for divorce in New England and modern divorce are. It seems that in this area many of the overall concepts and foundations are the same. The reasons seem to be standard and the only difference is that there was a double standard. They were obvious grounds for divorce if the indiscretions were committed by the wife and not the husband. Considering the rest of the country Connecticut was ahead of the game and practically modern! I wonder why that was that New England offered a more absolute divorce--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== SC feme sole trader acts, 1712, 1744 ==&lt;br /&gt;
It was interesting to read about the feme sole laws in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Pennsylvania allowed women whose husbands would not support them to become feme soles. That was definitely a positive gain for women whose husbands deserted them or were bankrupt. It makes sense that the women may have had to use their earnings to pay off their deadbeat husband&amp;#039;s debts because that is basically like marriage today. If one spouse goes into debt then they are both in debt. I also found in interesting that South Carolina did not specify who could or could not be a feme sole. Of course, a married woman who wanted to become a feme sole would have needed to have written permission from their husband. Still, the idea of allowing a married woman to participate in business shows that South Carolina was pretty liberal at this time. I find it funny that South Carolina was liberal back then, but isn&amp;#039;t exactly known for being liberal today. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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We discussed in class that all of the colonies/states eventually allowed for some level of divorce or separation, except for South Carolina. However, South Carolina did have some of the most liberal laws for married women. They could engage in business independent of their husbands, and they could sue and be sued, much like unmarried women as feme soles. Unlike in other colonies, none of this was dependent on the state of their marriage. Husbands didn’t have to be unsupportive or absent for wives to be involved in business. I wonder if the more open laws for married women in South Carolina played a part in its lack of divorce laws. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting how South Carolina allowed women to stand alone within the trade community. While being responsible for &amp;quot;their business debts&amp;quot; may seem less than pleasurable for women, it was a definite breakthrough for women. (P. 77) The idea that women had an identity away from their husbands/males was a feat within itself. Women were recognized as individuals, ones who could be held responsible for their own actions in the trade community. It surprised me that South Carolina would be the one to pass this law about &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Femme Soles&amp;#039;&amp;#039; in trading, since their divorce laws were strict and almost non-existent. ----- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mass, 1675-1680 – Women in county courts ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In the Malefactors and Complaints there seems to be a general way of punishment.  You were either whipped, sent away, and or had to pay a fine.  The women seemed to be treated much more harshly then men and they tended to be made an example of, in particular Margaret Brewster.  It seems harsh for a women to be stripped from waste down, tide to a cart and to have received 20 stripes for coming to church not looking appropriate for the occasion.  The way she was described she almost sounds as if she&amp;#039;s homeless.  John Man was sentenced with bond of 200 lbs for his good behavior for beating of his servant but received no stripes (which would have seemed fitting for what he had done to her.)  Then again she was a woman and a servant though it does state she was set free from her indenture. - Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it interesting that William Backway and his wife were punished for &amp;quot;fornication before theire marriage&amp;quot;. They got married so who cares? I also thought it was interesting that stealing and fornication had the same punishment being striped 15 times. Now stealing is much more of a big deal then having an affair. I agree with Marsha, the men had it easier. The woman has sex and is whipped the men have sex and they pay a fine. That is so ridiculous. It takes two to have a baby. They should have the same punishment. - LeAnn&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was interesting how, in this section, there was mention of Rebecca Auborne, who was sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine for &amp;quot;committing Fornication with Samuel Kemble having a bastard Childe&amp;quot;. In the next paragraph, however, Samuel Kemble is ordered to pay to Rebecca &amp;quot;two Shillings six pence&amp;quot; per week to support the child.(p.81) I wonder how the child, or any child who is born in such a circumstance, would be treated in colonial America? Would they be &amp;quot;assimilated&amp;quot; with any future children their mother might have with her husband, or would they be forever treated as &amp;quot;outcasts&amp;quot; and/or not accepted? -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the names in these Malefactors and Complainants, it seemed like every other women was named Elizabeth or Mary (in the wills and antenuptials  too) but then out of nowhere there were names like Mercy, Goody, Experience . How common were these names? --Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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== Virginia, 1642, NY 1721-1759 – Widows, Wills and Dower Rights ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought it was interesting reading the wills of men. The order of recipients in the wills caught my eye. The majority of the men left their belongings first to their sons, his daughters next, followed by the wife. In very few cases was the wife mentioned first and in them if the wife married someone else the law would decide what she would receive and she would receive very little of the estate. - Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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The wills aren&amp;#039;t all too surprising... sons, daughters, then wife. Typical.  My question is how were wills left? Was there a person they were given to in town or did they just keep them handy at the bedside? - Christine&lt;br /&gt;
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One line I found most interesting in one of the wills was in “A Virginia Will, 1642” by George Travellor. The particular line said, “And to my daughter Elizabeth att her day of Marriage or otherwise att Fifteene yeares of Age.” I know we talked about the early marriages of the times but this brought attention to it. It seemed Elizabeth’s father assumed she would be married by the age of 15. I have a random/rather dumb question at the bottom of some of the Wills it said “Proved, November, 1755.” or something like that, was that the date of death/date the will was read? Sometimes it was days after the first date mentioned in the will and other times it was years after like Francis Bassett’s says “this 16 of December, 1749…” but at the end it says “Proved, June 14, 1758.” –Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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== Women’s Estates, Mass, 1664, NY 1747-1759 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Comparing these women&amp;#039;s wills to the men&amp;#039;s in the previous articles, it is obvious that there is a clear distinction. The women commonly left their property to their daughters first and then their sons. I think the women tended to be biased towards the females of their family because they wanted them to receive as much as possible for they would not get to own very much of their own throughout their life. The boys on the other hand would have many rights and own real property of their own. I liked the fact that the women were trying to give the daughters as much as they could after their death.- Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the wills of women to be rather interesting. After reading the previous articles I questioned whether women wrote them or not, seeing as their property was that of their husbands. Women did give to their daughers first and then their sons, but what I found different about women&amp;#039;s wills was they were more personal. Women wanted to make sure their children and in some cases grandchildren were taken care of down to the slightest detail of giving a daughter &amp;quot;a set of gold buttons &amp;quot;to the value of a Pistole.&amp;quot;&amp;quot;(p. 89). They took care of the smallest details and thought about the family more than themselves. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Megan that women&amp;#039;s wills seem much more personal, and the attention to detail is amazing. I think it is also interesting to see hoe wills can express what people value most, even today. I especially liked the will of Jane Jones, written in July 1756. In it, she leaves 5 shillings to her son, John Jones, and then goes on to mention her daughters and what she is bequeathing to them. The list for her daughters is much more detailed and personal. Of course, as the editor mentions, she could be compensating her daughters for the neglect they may have felt from their father&amp;#039;s will (much of what would have probably gone to his son). Or, she simply could have had a closer bond and attachment to her daughters. I think wills in general, and especially those of women of this time period, reveal quite a lot at the same time that they pose quite a few questions that we aren&amp;#039;t really sure about or cannot answer definitively. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this source was a good example of what was stated in the Property and Personalism article, showing women giving items within their will to their children and grandchildren based on need and merit as well as showing a preference to female dependants, who would by nature need more for support and having less legal rights.  I also found it interesting that in the New York will of Anna Pritchard specifically states where she wishes to be buried, who the pall bearers ought to be and also the followers, and in Catharine Bromley also of New York leaves her estate in charge of funeral charges and  only afterward would her assets be split.  This reflects what was stated in the article about women having thought more about mortality due to their constant state of fear due to childbirth, that this woman would have thought more about her death and would describe how her funeral ought to be – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It was interesting to learn that women&amp;#039;s deed of gifts and wills were quite different than men in Petersburg.  Not only was it out of the ordinary for women to have wills but very interesting to read about what they willed and who they willed it to.  Mary Bolling is interesting because she included some of her heirs but excluded others such as her grandson Thomas Shore.  The idea that women played favorites and designated who got what instead of most men&amp;#039;s wills dividing everything equally among their heirs.  I can&amp;#039;t help but think about my grandmother when I read this chapter in the book.  As we went through her things after she passed, we found little notes with specific names on it willed to that person.  These items were not actually in her will but they meant enough in her mind to give it to a specific person.  Though the women in Petersburg were in a different time than my grandmother, it gives us a sense of women&amp;#039;s thought process.  The thought of who would most benefit from receiving that gift, who was grandma&amp;#039;s favorite, or who asked first?  Women showed their nurturing abilities by denoting some security for their children. Men&amp;#039;s wills did not show these specific details. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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On my other post I had remarked that I found it interesting that women wrote wills during the nineteenth century but through this article I found more interesting how light-hearted women were about wills. &amp;quot;It may have been that women, who looked at death with every pregnancy...had less trouble making preparations for their dying.&amp;quot;(p. 134). This statement proved that although women seemed to have more trouble with finances in Petersburg they were willing to be prepared and to protect their assets for their heirs. Women are typically seen as being more caring and watchful over families and through the wills in this article I find it to be true over men. Men just wrote out property (moveable or not) and to whom, women gave thought to the process; was it due to the fact that they were more nurturing or prepared? Did women face death more often than men of the nineteenth century?  -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this article was fascinating. The author described a period of time when single women had more control over property. I was curious about how men reacted to this new development. Thomas Jefferson was an adolescent when his father died. He received property and slaves from his father, but due to his young age, his mother had some control over her husband’s estate. Young Jefferson was not too happy about this situation and I do not think it was a coincidence that the rest his life was void of a strong attachment to his mother and any assertion of legal rights for women.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised to read that women played favorites much more then men when they wrote their wills. Then I thought about it and men almost always gave their land to their sons which is a sort of favoritism. I would expect women to give other women more then men because women live in an often precarious situation. They may not have enough money to live on or may have an unhappy marriage. All women feel the constraints society puts on them. It makes sense for women to leave their daughters more because men have most of the power. - LeAnn T.&lt;br /&gt;
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I find it interesting that women, unlike men, divided property unevenly between their heirs and gave special provisions for slaves in their wills. They were influenced by particular attachments and personal day to day interactions. I get the feeling that this practice in female wills didn’t help men’s opinions of women. It probably helped reinforce women as indulgent, emotional, irrational, and sentimental, which seemingly made them incapable of taking part in more level headed and intellectual pursuits. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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It surprised me to read how women who were spinsters and windows were given many rights. I feel like it was a step in the right direction in regards to women&amp;#039;s rights. Women were not left helpless, but were given the opportunity to make a life for themselves, without reliance on men. I feel that women gained more self confidence through this new idea of self-dependence. For example, Mary Bolling stood her ground against the British invasion of her house, and also how she stood up against her son-in-law who was attempting to take more property from her. Although single women had more rights, I feel that it was easier for women to be taken advantage of in the business world. While they were given more privileges, there were still restrictions placed on them, so it probably made it easier for men in the business world to use those restrictions to advance themselves and cheat the women. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this article on Property and personalism very interesting.  The comparisons from the male use of the will to equally divide assets for the purpose of financial support to women’s selective gift giving based on personal merit and need, including for slaves was very enlightening on how wills were used and who benefited from them and why. I agree with Marsha’s comment about how this is still common with grandmothers and hand selecting items to give, as this was the case with my own. Does this help reflect similarities in gender roles to today’s women? I think it’s an interesting idea for comparison.  I would have liked if the author was clearer about the historical reasons there was increase in women’s legal activities up to 1860.  How does the increase in population affect this increase in numbers of active legal women? Changes about education, legal rights, gender roles?  I think I would have liked more facts in addition to the analysis of sentimentality. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_6_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 6 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_6_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-01T05:38:56Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Susanna Haswell Rowson, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte: A Tale of Truth&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1794 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Susanna Haswell Rowson, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte: A Tale of Truth&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1794 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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So, this novel was the most popular in America for almost &amp;#039;&amp;#039;sixty years&amp;#039;&amp;#039;? Wow. This one&amp;#039;s a real bodice ripper, folks. Here we have the 18th century version of the Harlequin novel and a good plot for a Lifetime Original Movie. I would almost call it the worst thing I’ve ever read that&amp;#039;s been published, except it was so entertaining. However, I don’t think I was entertained in the same way that 18th century women were (and I very much hope that it was mostly women reading this). I thought it was interesting how the preface says the novel is based on a true story, but the people involved are all dead and the names are changed, and, of course, the “Tale of Truth” bit in the title. Well, it’s nice to know people have been using &amp;#039;&amp;#039;that&amp;#039;&amp;#039; one for so long. Apparently, this book was replaced in popularity by &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Uncle Tom’s Cabin&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, so it’s interesting that women seem to have a lot of success with novels in America. Does it have to do with the audience, which I presume is more often women than men? In the case of &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Uncle Tom&amp;#039;s Cabin&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, I imagine part of the reason it was successful was because it was so controversial. Was &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte&amp;#039;&amp;#039; considered controversial in it&amp;#039;s time? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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This was such I great read I have to comment it on it more! So, what have I learned from this exceptional piece of literature? Do not under any circumstances disobey your parents or you will live a horrible life and then die (God might forgive you though, if you&amp;#039;re repentant). If you do promise yourself to a man at the disapproval of your parents, don’t go back on your word or the once dashing officer will turn into Snidely Whiplash and kidnap you to another country, take advantage of you (but it’s not rape if you enjoy it), neglect you, and leave you pregnant and in poverty, and it will be all YOUR fault, because YOU forced him to take action due to your indecisiveness even if he’s the one that manipulated you into agreeing to be with him in the first place. Isn’t it so great that women can be just as and sometimes even more misogynistic than men? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I have to agree with Taylor&amp;#039;s comments after reading this piece I was reminded of a modern day soap opera, filled with betrayal, love/lust, and desertion of a husband to take care of the children. I have to ask though how many women of the eighteenth century read this novel, and much less were literate? For a novel that was popular for 60 years I assume it did well, but I do think &amp;quot;Charlotte&amp;quot; was typical of women at the time. She went from the supervision of her father to a world run by her husband and was confined to the home. How did women feel about the novel? Did they agree their lives followed ideals of romance? And child rearing? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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This document did a good job of keeping me entertained and interested. I probably would have been one of many who read this book during the time. Charlotte&amp;#039;s character annoyed me a little. At first I wanted her to be with the man, but then when she started saying how she did not want to dishonor her family and respected them too much to leave, I thought those were good points also. One minute she&amp;#039;s on her way to tell him she is not going with him and the next thing you know he is picking her up and putting her in the carriage to take her away. Were men in reality really this suave and cunning to be able to change a women&amp;#039;s mind so quickly? She seemed to be determined and knew what she wanted but she sure threw that out the window. It&amp;#039;s cool to see how a situation like this can also be seen today in modern times, when men are able to work their charm to capture womens&amp;#039; hearts. The endings can be quite sad sometimes, however.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Regarding what Amy says, about Charlotte&amp;#039;s indecisiveness: I think Susanna Rowson&amp;#039;s story might be considered an example of what we discussed in class on Tuesday- that men of the &amp;quot;New Republic&amp;quot; did not consider women &amp;quot;fit&amp;quot; for politics because they had &amp;quot;weak&amp;quot; minds and, further, thought them to be incapable of even making their own decisions without the assistance or guidance of their male relatives (either husband, or father, etc.). Thus, the &amp;quot;dependency&amp;quot; of women is reinforced. I think this thought process is exhibited in &amp;quot;Charlotte: A Tale of Truth&amp;quot;. As Amy states, Charlotte starts out determined but then quickly changes her mind and opinions throughout the story. As a result, I think Rowson&amp;#039;s piece ultimately might have had a negative impact and influence on women in the long run, because it reinforced the ideas of male superiority and female dependence. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison. Susanna Haswell Rowson was not acting exactly in a typical ladylike manner when she wrote a novel. You can tell that she is conscious of this in the preface. Susanna Haswell Rowson almost seems to be apologizing for stepping out of her sphere, justifying it by saying that she was writing to teach young women to guard their virtue. Again reinforcing female dependency and inferiority, she argued that her work was important because it enabled women to continue to exercise a moralizing influence over men. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like Susanna Haswell Rowson was attempting to get a point across through this story. I feel she was trying to warn girls about what might happen if they were to decide to step out of the bounds of socially acceptable behavior. She portrayed Charlotte as a young woman who was very protected in her world, but it was a world that was aligned with the idea of women at the time. She went to boarding school, and was very proper. Then she met a boy and deserted her family, which at the time I&amp;#039;m sure was frowned upon greatly, and ran away with him. While it seemed romantic that she followed her heart, Rowson instantaneously portrays Charlotte as unhappy with her current life with Montraville. She regretted her decision especially when she became ill and was without Montraville. I feel Rowson displayed Charlotte in this way to show her readers/fans how easy it was for a woman to become blinded by love, how easy it was to throw away all social responsibility, and how it would end up in a disappointing life. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I really did not like how she said her no one would censure her because the story was she is a moral woman and her story promoted good morals. Why does she feel the need to tell us that. Then she talks to the mothers who are reading her work not to worry again as if her work was raunchy. Her story was ridiculous. Charlotte was annoying, always crying and waiting for a man who does not love her. Then she dies as soon as her parents find her. The moral of the story is to obey your parents or you will be the most miserable person in the world and then you will die. I guess its nice that she was trying to warn girls about loving the wrong man but the story was melodramatic. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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Is it bad that I loved this?? Is there a sequel! Who was the consumer for this book? Mothers who read it aloud to their daughters as a warning? I was surprised of the nature of this story when I read the short bio about the author Susanna Rowson I was expecting something a little more controversial. I mean I suppose this was controversial but Charlotte was such a weak female character that it almost seemed to cancel anything else out. The fact that Rowson was a female novelist seemed to be pretty substantial and impressive considering the time period but maybe the reason why she was so popular is because she wasn&amp;#039;t encouraging any other bad behaviors amongst women. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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Ok wait on a side note I was just looking at the article again and in the little bit about the author it says she returned to England in a prisoner exchange? Did I miss something? that seems kind of out of the ordinary was she a prisoner? Actually everything about her bio seemed rather different from that of the typical woman. She was an actress and a playwright! Why would such a seemingly accomplished and educated woman want to write something like this work? When I read the bio I was expecting a seriously scandalous read....I have to admit Charlotte fell a little short but I would still read more of it!-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Judith Murray, “The Story of Margaretta,” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In the piece by Judith Murray, “The Story of Margaretta,” In the introduction it states, “The maze of gender identities created as the views of a girl and a women are filtered through the perspective of a man, who is himself a fictional creation of a woman, adds another layer of meaning to the story.” So in reading this piece, I kept this layer of meaning in mind. I had a hard time reading some sections were blurred out. However, it seemed to me that the male view of Margaretta and her intelligence and education was positive. I am sure this probably wasn’t the overarching view that most males would have had at the time, so I am curious if this would have any impact on the readers at the time. What was Judith Murray going for? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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In &amp;quot;The Story of Margaretta,&amp;quot; I am not sure if she is writing through the eyes of a man because she thinks it would be read by more people or her agenda was to show Mr. Vigillius view on educating women in hopes that it would have changed things for women.  In the story, a reference was made about Mary not being concerned with a women&amp;#039;s dress though she was still a &amp;quot;complete housewife,&amp;quot; showed that it was more important for Margaretta to be taught things that made her more intellectual.  I think this made her more the exception.  Mary had an extensive plan for Margaretta&amp;#039;s education.  Her education went outside the realm of housewifery duties which Mr. Vigillius stated Margaretta did with proficiency.  Mr. Vigillius was not fond of Mary&amp;#039;s education plans for Margaretta but he let the matter go.  Through Mr Vigillius eyes, he thought in the long run Margaretta will be more intellectual for the education she received, after all a woman was to &amp;quot;inform the future man.&amp;quot;  I think Mr. Vigillius was also an exception because he admitted that in the long run Margaretta&amp;#039;s extensive education would make her life more distinguished. -Marsha H&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Judith Murray was writing as a man because women generally did not publish their work. In &amp;quot;The Study of Margaretta&amp;quot; she talks about educating women. I am all for that especially the languages and actual education outside being a house wife. I was a little annoyed that it was assumed she would be conceited because of her education. Her parents had to cultivate a good woman and had to  watch out that she would not become conceited in her superior knowledge. Educations does not equate to being conceited.It also annoyed me that they were talking about her virtues and how basically she was the perfect woman. She should not be eager for other people admiration&amp;#039;s. Who would even think about that? It almost seemed to me that Margaretta should not want people to be envious but people should because she is such a good woman. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised about the wide variety of aspects in which women were expected to &amp;quot;perfect.&amp;quot; Not only did girls need to learn housewifery skills like their mothers did when they were young, this new generation also learned more academic subjects so that they could teach their sons. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Murray might be justifying women&amp;#039;s education in a more subtle manner. Mr. Vigillins views on women&amp;#039;s education shows some reluctance along with acceptance. The &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Story of Margaretta&amp;#039;&amp;#039; seems to attempt to gradually change people&amp;#039;s minds on women&amp;#039;s education than demand equal education. Do you think this would be a more effective approach for the time? -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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The Story of Margaretta was an interesting read. Being written by a woman, it was obvious the emphasis on the benefits of education for women (children) as shown by the appraisal of Margaretta’s accomplishments, however it was put through the lens of men and so many of the benefits of the education was described in terms such as making her more valuable, more amiable, a pleasing and instruction companion (134) and her accomplishments as an accountant (135) all of which a man would most likely applause. The rant about eradicating conceit also would seem to be a male point of view, for fear of a woman knowing too much might cause her to have too large of an idea about her general place within society.  All in all though, it is often times almost obvious that this was written by a woman due to her extreme knowledge of sewing accomplishments, her fashion skills, and her overall accomplishments as a lady and all that it entails that I don’t know a man would possess such understanding of the subject. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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Allison’s comment brought to mind a scene from Pride and Prejudice where Darcy is describing what accomplished women should know “A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages… and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” &lt;br /&gt;
As with Darcy, Mr. Vigillius in “The Story of Margaretta” expected much of women. However, I wonder, if Vigillius’ desire for his adoptive daughter to know a wide range of subjects was a wish of the author, Judith Sargent Murray, for women to be able to receive an education in the many scholarly subjects that interested them rather than just housewifery.  The character Margaretta showed a certain skill in learning all these things why couldn’t other women. &lt;br /&gt;
-Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;On the Importance of the Obstetrick Art&amp;quot; by Catherine Scholten ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The change in childbirth from 1760 to 1825 was dramatic and changed the medical field forever. I found the inclusion of men into the field of childbirth as early as the 1750s with Dr. William Shippen Jr. suprising. But I do agree that it led to childbirth becoming more of a private matter rather than one that involved society. The portion of the reading that stood out to me was the exclusion of women in childbirth. Men believed women could no longer be midwives due to their lack of understanding &amp;quot;throughly the profession of medicine as a whole.&amp;quot; But men chose to leave out that women were not allowed to attend medical school thus losing any status they had in society when men overtook the practice of childbirth. I do wonder if labor became more private due to women being embarassed with having a male physician or due to husbands threatening doctors if they looked at their wives? To answer my own question I think it became a private matter due to embarassment of a man other than their husband participating in the intimate activity of childbirth. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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On page 79 of the piece by Catherine Scholten what stood out for me was the section where Scholten argued that birth became increasingly regarded as a medical problem to be managed by physicians. This is a complete 180 from the women in the colonial period of the 17th centuries that were expected to have as many children as possible until their death. This is a crucial turning point, from childbirth being celebrated to childbirth being a medical problem. This goes to show that what are considered norms are only a function of society at that particular time. -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this piece interesting because the one thing women had some control over and dominated was then being transferred to men.  All because physician were men during that time.  This piece raises many questions in my mind.  You have trained midwives and fill in midwives.  Then you have women in suburban areas where midwives delivered most of the babies because there was no doctor around.  In urban areas, there was doctor available if there were any problems arose during childbirth.  Then there was the problem of women being concerned with the presence of a &amp;quot;man&amp;quot; looking at a woman in this &amp;quot;delicate&amp;quot; way.  Another point, it that when you have a midwife with years of a experience delivering babies and a man who is &amp;quot;medically trained&amp;quot; with little experience, what would you feel most comfortable with?  There was a large transition here from women to men in childbirth.  During this time, you had women being more educated and they may have felt they had more choices.  In making these choices do they oust other women out of the arena?  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I did not know how much birth used to be a &amp;quot;spectator&amp;#039;s sport&amp;quot;. All these women standing around trying to soothe the woman who is giving birth and going through extreme amounts of pain. I guess I understand that a joke might ease the mood, but I am personally glad men stepped into the picture. I think it would be a little awkward having people stand around even if they were all females. Most of the time, the midwives were not even trained that well. I like the idea of having a doctor who is medically trained and knows what he is doing involved in the process of birth.I thought it was a little comical how prude people were and did not want the male physician to look at the female as much as possible. No wonder &amp;quot;things&amp;quot; got cut off on occasion. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel that the idea of men taking over midwife positions was an infringement to women&amp;#039;s rights. As midwives, women had a responsibility, and a respectable one at that. Many women worked within their own homes, but these midwives were in the business of helping women outside of their own homes. When male physicians entered the scene, female midwives slowly lost their jobs. At the time, I believe female midwives would have been better than male physicians because the midwives understood the female body, and could sympathize with the women they helped. Also, Scholten talks about how the male physicians could not even look at specific parts of the woman&amp;#039;s body... I&amp;#039;m sure that made giving birth even more unsafe than it already was. It just seemed contradictory because people believed that male physicians made childbirth safer because they knew more about medicine and had pain relief, etc, yet they were constrained in their duties by social norms, which sometimes put the woman or baby in danger.I also thought it was interesting how the women supported one another in child birth. It goes back to the idea of women forming bonds with one another through similar experiences, and  childbirth was definitely one of those bonding experiences among women, especially how they would take up the pregnant woman&amp;#039;s chores and would give moral support.  --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this piece extremely interesting, as well as thought provoking. I don&amp;#039;t think, however, that Catherine Scholten did a very good job of explaining exactly why such a transformation in the childbirth experiences of women occurred when it did. She states that similar changes undoubtedly would have taken place even without the American Revolution, but that &amp;quot;heightened concern with establishing &amp;#039;American&amp;#039; institutions and expertise speeded the development of medical schools and professional associations in the New Republic.&amp;quot; (p.78)I&amp;#039;m still not really convinced. I feel as if this is explaining the changes in terms of the &amp;quot;male&amp;quot; perspective, and while Scholten does include many details as to how women going through childbirth with the assistance of a male physician rather than a midwife felt (such as their initial reservations about the use of &amp;quot;instruments&amp;quot;, as well as their embarrassment at being attended to by a person of the opposite sex), I wish she had articulated her argument better and provided more thorough explanations and reasoning. I&amp;#039;m not sure if I&amp;#039;m even articulating my thoughts very well, but at the end of the piece I did feel as if she left several questions unanswered. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was incredibly interesting probably because it brings to light just how different childbirth used to be. Nowadays babies delivered by midwives at home are a rather rare event, though it appears to be an increasing “fad.” The view of childbirth shifted from a rather social event to a medical one. The reason for the pain of child birth was from Eve’s betrayal but slowly the idea changed so that they began to believe the woman did not have to suffer.  What stuck out at me most in this article was the fact women were not allowed to put their feet on the ground for weeks after giving birth for fear of getting a cold and the fact that hooks would be used to dismember the baby if the unfortunate thing got stuck in the birth canal. It just goes to show the change in medical practices and beliefs from the time. What I found rather ironic was the idea that the “moral character [of women] disqualified them from medical practice” such as childbirth when for years and years they had been the ones delivering the babies.&lt;br /&gt;
-Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that it was particularly interesting how she mentions that women had some degree of power. When they were midwives, which was true. They were governed at every turn in every aspect of their lives by fathers and husbands, but in the field of child birthing, they were in control. They were the only ones knowledgeable, through both experience and readings, up to the mid 1700&amp;#039;s when men began to take their places. As was already mentioned above, I am kind of surprised that men would kick midwives out of the birthing process so much, claiming that they were not knowledgeable. And, what is also odd to me is the fact that a man at the time would even consider being kind of a male midwife. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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The article “On the Importance of the Obsterick Art” was very interesting and covered general concepts of childbirth (such as positions, people present, the association with medicine, etc) we take for granted today that were not so in early America.  I personally found it interesting that women did not lie in bed to deliver until the male midwife came into practice and was for modesty, rather than comfort or ease.  I was also horrified at many of the tales of when deliveries went wrong such as on page 84, jerking the child out, dismembering the infant with hooks, and page 88 of accidental mutilations of the infant by “blind” male midwifes. I am frankly surprised as many children and women survived as they did, though it definitely makes more since for explaining to the high death rates! Yeiks! I thought the author could have spend more time on the explanation of the transition of birth to being a medical issue, as well as tying the concepts together such as birth being medical, medical being male role due to the incapability of the female mind, to changes in the understanding of the necessity of pain for females, and changes in ideas of decorum and male interaction in the delivery room. I thought this all could have been analyzed better as well as further explaining the concept of how childbirth is related to nation building and new national identities as talked about on page 78 which I don’t think she explained very well if at all. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Headline text ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_6_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 6 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_6_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-10-01T05:27:25Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Susanna Haswell Rowson, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte: A Tale of Truth&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1794 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Susanna Haswell Rowson, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte: A Tale of Truth&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, 1794 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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So, this novel was the most popular in America for almost &amp;#039;&amp;#039;sixty years&amp;#039;&amp;#039;? Wow. This one&amp;#039;s a real bodice ripper, folks. Here we have the 18th century version of the Harlequin novel and a good plot for a Lifetime Original Movie. I would almost call it the worst thing I’ve ever read that&amp;#039;s been published, except it was so entertaining. However, I don’t think I was entertained in the same way that 18th century women were (and I very much hope that it was mostly women reading this). I thought it was interesting how the preface says the novel is based on a true story, but the people involved are all dead and the names are changed, and, of course, the “Tale of Truth” bit in the title. Well, it’s nice to know people have been using &amp;#039;&amp;#039;that&amp;#039;&amp;#039; one for so long. Apparently, this book was replaced in popularity by &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Uncle Tom’s Cabin&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, so it’s interesting that women seem to have a lot of success with novels in America. Does it have to do with the audience, which I presume is more often women than men? In the case of &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Uncle Tom&amp;#039;s Cabin&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, I imagine part of the reason it was successful was because it was so controversial. Was &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Charlotte&amp;#039;&amp;#039; considered controversial in it&amp;#039;s time? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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This was such I great read I have to comment it on it more! So, what have I learned from this exceptional piece of literature? Do not under any circumstances disobey your parents or you will live a horrible life and then die (God might forgive you though, if you&amp;#039;re repentant). If you do promise yourself to a man at the disapproval of your parents, don’t go back on your word or the once dashing officer will turn into Snidely Whiplash and kidnap you to another country, take advantage of you (but it’s not rape if you enjoy it), neglect you, and leave you pregnant and in poverty, and it will be all YOUR fault, because YOU forced him to take action due to your indecisiveness even if he’s the one that manipulated you into agreeing to be with him in the first place. Isn’t it so great that women can be just as and sometimes even more misogynistic than men? -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I have to agree with Taylor&amp;#039;s comments after reading this piece I was reminded of a modern day soap opera, filled with betrayal, love/lust, and desertion of a husband to take care of the children. I have to ask though how many women of the eighteenth century read this novel, and much less were literate? For a novel that was popular for 60 years I assume it did well, but I do think &amp;quot;Charlotte&amp;quot; was typical of women at the time. She went from the supervision of her father to a world run by her husband and was confined to the home. How did women feel about the novel? Did they agree their lives followed ideals of romance? And child rearing? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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This document did a good job of keeping me entertained and interested. I probably would have been one of many who read this book during the time. Charlotte&amp;#039;s character annoyed me a little. At first I wanted her to be with the man, but then when she started saying how she did not want to dishonor her family and respected them too much to leave, I thought those were good points also. One minute she&amp;#039;s on her way to tell him she is not going with him and the next thing you know he is picking her up and putting her in the carriage to take her away. Were men in reality really this suave and cunning to be able to change a women&amp;#039;s mind so quickly? She seemed to be determined and knew what she wanted but she sure threw that out the window. It&amp;#039;s cool to see how a situation like this can also be seen today in modern times, when men are able to work their charm to capture womens&amp;#039; hearts. The endings can be quite sad sometimes, however.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Regarding what Amy says, about Charlotte&amp;#039;s indecisiveness: I think Susanna Rowson&amp;#039;s story might be considered an example of what we discussed in class on Tuesday- that men of the &amp;quot;New Republic&amp;quot; did not consider women &amp;quot;fit&amp;quot; for politics because they had &amp;quot;weak&amp;quot; minds and, further, thought them to be incapable of even making their own decisions without the assistance or guidance of their male relatives (either husband, or father, etc.). Thus, the &amp;quot;dependency&amp;quot; of women is reinforced. I think this thought process is exhibited in &amp;quot;Charlotte: A Tale of Truth&amp;quot;. As Amy states, Charlotte starts out determined but then quickly changes her mind and opinions throughout the story. As a result, I think Rowson&amp;#039;s piece ultimately might have had a negative impact and influence on women in the long run, because it reinforced the ideas of male superiority and female dependence. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison. Susanna Haswell Rowson was not acting exactly in a typical ladylike manner when she wrote a novel. You can tell that she is conscious of this in the preface. Susanna Haswell Rowson almost seems to be apologizing for stepping out of her sphere, justifying it by saying that she was writing to teach young women to guard their virtue. Again reinforcing female dependency and inferiority, she argued that her work was important because it enabled women to continue to exercise a moralizing influence over men. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like Susanna Haswell Rowson was attempting to get a point across through this story. I feel she was trying to warn girls about what might happen if they were to decide to step out of the bounds of socially acceptable behavior. She portrayed Charlotte as a young woman who was very protected in her world, but it was a world that was aligned with the idea of women at the time. She went to boarding school, and was very proper. Then she met a boy and deserted her family, which at the time I&amp;#039;m sure was frowned upon greatly, and ran away with him. While it seemed romantic that she followed her heart, Rowson instantaneously portrays Charlotte as unhappy with her current life with Montraville. She regretted her decision especially when she became ill and was without Montraville. I feel Rowson displayed Charlotte in this way to show her readers/fans how easy it was for a woman to become blinded by love, how easy it was to throw away all social responsibility, and how it would end up in a disappointing life. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I really did not like how she said her no one would censure her because the story was she is a moral woman and her story promoted good morals. Why does she feel the need to tell us that. Then she talks to the mothers who are reading her work not to worry again as if her work was raunchy. Her story was ridiculous. Charlotte was annoying, always crying and waiting for a man who does not love her. Then she dies as soon as her parents find her. The moral of the story is to obey your parents or you will be the most miserable person in the world and then you will die. I guess its nice that she was trying to warn girls about loving the wrong man but the story was melodramatic. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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Is it bad that I loved this?? Is there a sequel! Who was the consumer for this book? Mothers who read it aloud to their daughters as a warning? I was surprised of the nature of this story when I read the short bio about the author Susanna Rowson I was expecting something a little more controversial. I mean I suppose this was controversial but Charlotte was such a weak female character that it almost seemed to cancel anything else out. The fact that Rowson was a female novelist seemed to be pretty substantial and impressive considering the time period but maybe the reason why she was so popular is because she wasn&amp;#039;t encouraging any other bad behaviors amongst women. -Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Judith Murray, “The Story of Margaretta,” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In the piece by Judith Murray, “The Story of Margaretta,” In the introduction it states, “The maze of gender identities created as the views of a girl and a women are filtered through the perspective of a man, who is himself a fictional creation of a woman, adds another layer of meaning to the story.” So in reading this piece, I kept this layer of meaning in mind. I had a hard time reading some sections were blurred out. However, it seemed to me that the male view of Margaretta and her intelligence and education was positive. I am sure this probably wasn’t the overarching view that most males would have had at the time, so I am curious if this would have any impact on the readers at the time. What was Judith Murray going for? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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In &amp;quot;The Story of Margaretta,&amp;quot; I am not sure if she is writing through the eyes of a man because she thinks it would be read by more people or her agenda was to show Mr. Vigillius view on educating women in hopes that it would have changed things for women.  In the story, a reference was made about Mary not being concerned with a women&amp;#039;s dress though she was still a &amp;quot;complete housewife,&amp;quot; showed that it was more important for Margaretta to be taught things that made her more intellectual.  I think this made her more the exception.  Mary had an extensive plan for Margaretta&amp;#039;s education.  Her education went outside the realm of housewifery duties which Mr. Vigillius stated Margaretta did with proficiency.  Mr. Vigillius was not fond of Mary&amp;#039;s education plans for Margaretta but he let the matter go.  Through Mr Vigillius eyes, he thought in the long run Margaretta will be more intellectual for the education she received, after all a woman was to &amp;quot;inform the future man.&amp;quot;  I think Mr. Vigillius was also an exception because he admitted that in the long run Margaretta&amp;#039;s extensive education would make her life more distinguished. -Marsha H&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Judith Murray was writing as a man because women generally did not publish their work. In &amp;quot;The Study of Margaretta&amp;quot; she talks about educating women. I am all for that especially the languages and actual education outside being a house wife. I was a little annoyed that it was assumed she would be conceited because of her education. Her parents had to cultivate a good woman and had to  watch out that she would not become conceited in her superior knowledge. Educations does not equate to being conceited.It also annoyed me that they were talking about her virtues and how basically she was the perfect woman. She should not be eager for other people admiration&amp;#039;s. Who would even think about that? It almost seemed to me that Margaretta should not want people to be envious but people should because she is such a good woman. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I was surprised about the wide variety of aspects in which women were expected to &amp;quot;perfect.&amp;quot; Not only did girls need to learn housewifery skills like their mothers did when they were young, this new generation also learned more academic subjects so that they could teach their sons. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Murray might be justifying women&amp;#039;s education in a more subtle manner. Mr. Vigillins views on women&amp;#039;s education shows some reluctance along with acceptance. The &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Story of Margaretta&amp;#039;&amp;#039; seems to attempt to gradually change people&amp;#039;s minds on women&amp;#039;s education than demand equal education. Do you think this would be a more effective approach for the time? -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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The Story of Margaretta was an interesting read. Being written by a woman, it was obvious the emphasis on the benefits of education for women (children) as shown by the appraisal of Margaretta’s accomplishments, however it was put through the lens of men and so many of the benefits of the education was described in terms such as making her more valuable, more amiable, a pleasing and instruction companion (134) and her accomplishments as an accountant (135) all of which a man would most likely applause. The rant about eradicating conceit also would seem to be a male point of view, for fear of a woman knowing too much might cause her to have too large of an idea about her general place within society.  All in all though, it is often times almost obvious that this was written by a woman due to her extreme knowledge of sewing accomplishments, her fashion skills, and her overall accomplishments as a lady and all that it entails that I don’t know a man would possess such understanding of the subject. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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Allison’s comment brought to mind a scene from Pride and Prejudice where Darcy is describing what accomplished women should know “A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages… and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” &lt;br /&gt;
As with Darcy, Mr. Vigillius in “The Story of Margaretta” expected much of women. However, I wonder, if Vigillius’ desire for his adoptive daughter to know a wide range of subjects was a wish of the author, Judith Sargent Murray, for women to be able to receive an education in the many scholarly subjects that interested them rather than just housewifery.  The character Margaretta showed a certain skill in learning all these things why couldn’t other women. &lt;br /&gt;
-Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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== &amp;quot;On the Importance of the Obstetrick Art&amp;quot; by Catherine Scholten ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The change in childbirth from 1760 to 1825 was dramatic and changed the medical field forever. I found the inclusion of men into the field of childbirth as early as the 1750s with Dr. William Shippen Jr. suprising. But I do agree that it led to childbirth becoming more of a private matter rather than one that involved society. The portion of the reading that stood out to me was the exclusion of women in childbirth. Men believed women could no longer be midwives due to their lack of understanding &amp;quot;throughly the profession of medicine as a whole.&amp;quot; But men chose to leave out that women were not allowed to attend medical school thus losing any status they had in society when men overtook the practice of childbirth. I do wonder if labor became more private due to women being embarassed with having a male physician or due to husbands threatening doctors if they looked at their wives? To answer my own question I think it became a private matter due to embarassment of a man other than their husband participating in the intimate activity of childbirth. -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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On page 79 of the piece by Catherine Scholten what stood out for me was the section where Scholten argued that birth became increasingly regarded as a medical problem to be managed by physicians. This is a complete 180 from the women in the colonial period of the 17th centuries that were expected to have as many children as possible until their death. This is a crucial turning point, from childbirth being celebrated to childbirth being a medical problem. This goes to show that what are considered norms are only a function of society at that particular time. -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this piece interesting because the one thing women had some control over and dominated was then being transferred to men.  All because physician were men during that time.  This piece raises many questions in my mind.  You have trained midwives and fill in midwives.  Then you have women in suburban areas where midwives delivered most of the babies because there was no doctor around.  In urban areas, there was doctor available if there were any problems arose during childbirth.  Then there was the problem of women being concerned with the presence of a &amp;quot;man&amp;quot; looking at a woman in this &amp;quot;delicate&amp;quot; way.  Another point, it that when you have a midwife with years of a experience delivering babies and a man who is &amp;quot;medically trained&amp;quot; with little experience, what would you feel most comfortable with?  There was a large transition here from women to men in childbirth.  During this time, you had women being more educated and they may have felt they had more choices.  In making these choices do they oust other women out of the arena?  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I did not know how much birth used to be a &amp;quot;spectator&amp;#039;s sport&amp;quot;. All these women standing around trying to soothe the woman who is giving birth and going through extreme amounts of pain. I guess I understand that a joke might ease the mood, but I am personally glad men stepped into the picture. I think it would be a little awkward having people stand around even if they were all females. Most of the time, the midwives were not even trained that well. I like the idea of having a doctor who is medically trained and knows what he is doing involved in the process of birth.I thought it was a little comical how prude people were and did not want the male physician to look at the female as much as possible. No wonder &amp;quot;things&amp;quot; got cut off on occasion. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel that the idea of men taking over midwife positions was an infringement to women&amp;#039;s rights. As midwives, women had a responsibility, and a respectable one at that. Many women worked within their own homes, but these midwives were in the business of helping women outside of their own homes. When male physicians entered the scene, female midwives slowly lost their jobs. At the time, I believe female midwives would have been better than male physicians because the midwives understood the female body, and could sympathize with the women they helped. Also, Scholten talks about how the male physicians could not even look at specific parts of the woman&amp;#039;s body... I&amp;#039;m sure that made giving birth even more unsafe than it already was. It just seemed contradictory because people believed that male physicians made childbirth safer because they knew more about medicine and had pain relief, etc, yet they were constrained in their duties by social norms, which sometimes put the woman or baby in danger.I also thought it was interesting how the women supported one another in child birth. It goes back to the idea of women forming bonds with one another through similar experiences, and  childbirth was definitely one of those bonding experiences among women, especially how they would take up the pregnant woman&amp;#039;s chores and would give moral support.  --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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I also found this piece extremely interesting, as well as thought provoking. I don&amp;#039;t think, however, that Catherine Scholten did a very good job of explaining exactly why such a transformation in the childbirth experiences of women occurred when it did. She states that similar changes undoubtedly would have taken place even without the American Revolution, but that &amp;quot;heightened concern with establishing &amp;#039;American&amp;#039; institutions and expertise speeded the development of medical schools and professional associations in the New Republic.&amp;quot; (p.78)I&amp;#039;m still not really convinced. I feel as if this is explaining the changes in terms of the &amp;quot;male&amp;quot; perspective, and while Scholten does include many details as to how women going through childbirth with the assistance of a male physician rather than a midwife felt (such as their initial reservations about the use of &amp;quot;instruments&amp;quot;, as well as their embarrassment at being attended to by a person of the opposite sex), I wish she had articulated her argument better and provided more thorough explanations and reasoning. I&amp;#039;m not sure if I&amp;#039;m even articulating my thoughts very well, but at the end of the piece I did feel as if she left several questions unanswered. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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This article was incredibly interesting probably because it brings to light just how different childbirth used to be. Nowadays babies delivered by midwives at home are a rather rare event, though it appears to be an increasing “fad.” The view of childbirth shifted from a rather social event to a medical one. The reason for the pain of child birth was from Eve’s betrayal but slowly the idea changed so that they began to believe the woman did not have to suffer.  What stuck out at me most in this article was the fact women were not allowed to put their feet on the ground for weeks after giving birth for fear of getting a cold and the fact that hooks would be used to dismember the baby if the unfortunate thing got stuck in the birth canal. It just goes to show the change in medical practices and beliefs from the time. What I found rather ironic was the idea that the “moral character [of women] disqualified them from medical practice” such as childbirth when for years and years they had been the ones delivering the babies.&lt;br /&gt;
-Megan Mc&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought that it was particularly interesting how she mentions that women had some degree of power. When they were midwives, which was true. They were governed at every turn in every aspect of their lives by fathers and husbands, but in the field of child birthing, they were in control. They were the only ones knowledgeable, through both experience and readings, up to the mid 1700&amp;#039;s when men began to take their places. As was already mentioned above, I am kind of surprised that men would kick midwives out of the birthing process so much, claiming that they were not knowledgeable. And, what is also odd to me is the fact that a man at the time would even consider being kind of a male midwife. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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The article “On the Importance of the Obsterick Art” was very interesting and covered general concepts of childbirth (such as positions, people present, the association with medicine, etc) we take for granted today that were not so in early America.  I personally found it interesting that women did not lie in bed to deliver until the male midwife came into practice and was for modesty, rather than comfort or ease.  I was also horrified at many of the tales of when deliveries went wrong such as on page 84, jerking the child out, dismembering the infant with hooks, and page 88 of accidental mutilations of the infant by “blind” male midwifes. I am frankly surprised as many children and women survived as they did, though it definitely makes more since for explaining to the high death rates! Yeiks! I thought the author could have spend more time on the explanation of the transition of birth to being a medical issue, as well as tying the concepts together such as birth being medical, medical being male role due to the incapability of the female mind, to changes in the understanding of the necessity of pain for females, and changes in ideas of decorum and male interaction in the delivery room. I thought this all could have been analyzed better as well as further explaining the concept of how childbirth is related to nation building and new national identities as talked about on page 78 which I don’t think she explained very well if at all. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Headline text ==&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_5_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 5 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_5_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-09-24T07:14:52Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Abigail Adams, Remember the Ladies, 1776 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Comparative questions or comments ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Phillis Wheatley, 1768, An address to George III ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Phillis Wheatley had an extremely rare story. She was a slave who was taught by her owners to read and write, she was sent to Europe to publish her poems and was freed upon her return.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; What is more rare is that Phillis was not only literate but aware of the politics of the time, as shown in her address to George III&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. As a slave who was owned I wonder what parallels she drew between that and the colonies that were owned by England. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I do like Phillis Wheatley&amp;#039;s story.  I&amp;#039;m sure it was very rare to even have such education and praise, and to be sent to England to publish poetry for a white woman, so for a slave to achieve such heights is quite remarkable.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also find the subject of her poem rather shocking, seeing as how she is/was a slave&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  To speak out against the king (or anyone) for that matter and be black AND a woman must have taken real courage.  - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eliza Wilkinson, Carolina Patriot, 1782 ==&lt;br /&gt;
This reading was very interesting. I felt that Eliza painted the British in a very harsh light (which I know was the point), but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;she just seemed like a bit of a hypocrite. One sentence really caught my eye: &amp;quot;The Americans are obliged to commit unavoidable acts of cruelty; the defense of their country requires it; you seek their lives and liberties, and they must either kill or be killed.&amp;quot; So, its ok for the Americans can be mean and cruel, but if the English are then that’s ten times worse?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Also in this reading, Eliza tells a bit of a story some man told her about someone, (I&amp;#039;m assuming the someone is an analogy for the British and his farm is an analogy for the Americans), encroaching on his farm taking more and more from him. And, at the end he asks, &amp;quot;is this not slavery?&amp;quot; Now that is pretty ridiculous because as a North Carolina planter, I&amp;#039;m sure he had slaves, or at the very least, neighbors who had slaves. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;So, as long as the Americans are not treated like slaves, then it is fine, but they can still have slaves of their own.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
One more sentence in this reading really caught my eye, When Eliza is talking about Homer and she says, &amp;quot;what contemptible EARTH WORMS these authors make us!&amp;quot; She is expressing her displeasure over not even having the liberty to think, and she says that that is all she wants. She writes of how the men would not want women to be a part of political matters, and she does not care. She wishes only to think for herself. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Revolution seems to mark a period where women can start voicing political opinions without being attacked for it.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Eliza Wilkinson, at least in her letters, claimed the right to express her political sentiments and rages about how authors make women out to be weak and fit for nothing more than menial tasks, or in more visceral language, appearing as “contemptible &amp;#039;&amp;#039;earth worms&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (124).” &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Interestingly, she apparently had political discussions not just with her female friends, but with males as well. She talks about a conversation with a Patriot officer. Whether or not he took her opinions seriously, I don’t know, but the fact that he was willing to talk with her about politics suggests a change in attitude from earlier colonial times.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Of course, Eliza is an elite with a fair amount of power, giving her the opportunity and station to speak up. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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Eliza Wilkinson is rather bloodthirsty when she talks about how it is acceptable for &amp;quot;Americans&amp;quot; to be cruel to the enemy. I think it is funny how she talks about how everyone is equal but Americans are at the same time superior. I did like how she said that men should not restrict a woman&amp;#039;s right to think for herself. I liked her patriotism and the fact that she spoke her mind about what she thought of the revolution despite the fact that women are not supposed to think about such things.  - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Grace Galloway’s diary, 1778-79, Philadelphia ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it was rather interesting that Grace Galloway &amp;quot;resented the intrusion of politics into her personal life.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I feel like this may be the reason why it took women so long to start getting involved in &amp;quot;men&amp;#039;s affairs&amp;quot; because many women, like Grace, did not care for it. They would rather just be housewives and be content with that. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed Grace Galloways entry she seemed so stubborn and defiant! I loved it. It was interesting to read her entry in comparison to that of Eliza Wilkinson. Both women although on opposing sides had very strong opinions and seemed to have no qualms with sharing them. I was impressed by the fact that Grace stayed behind when her husband and daughter left for England (even her reasons might have been selfish!) The fact that Grace was penalized for her views was interesting I wonder if they would have persecuted her even if she had been apolitical just because of her husbands tory status which she would have been automatically associated with. &lt;br /&gt;
--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Abigail Adams, Remember the Ladies, 1776 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I love this letter&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  When Abigail wrote this letter to her husband she hoped that he would include women in the new code of laws.  She wasn&amp;#039;t afraid to say that if they were not recognized they would rebel.  He laughed at her request for women to be included in those laws.  She even wrote to her friend Mercy Warren, trying to get a petition going of their greviances.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;An interesting point was when Abigail wrote back to her husband and said, &amp;quot;we have it in our power not only to free ouselves but to subdue our masters.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  She was telling him that women had a lot more power than men realize.  By the power of persuation and a woman&amp;#039;s wit and charm, women could get their masters to submit to whatever they wanted.  Abigail was very &amp;quot;saucy&amp;quot;  and is not afraid to tell her husband what she thinks and admits she will fight against laws that have no representation for women. I like that Abigail saw this as a golden opportunity for women to seek out more liberties and express themselves in this new government these men were creating.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I particularly like how John writes, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;quot;But your letter was the first intimation that another tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented.&amp;quot; I have the feeling that he is kind of mocking her&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; by saying that this is the first he has ever heard of women being discontented with their social status. But, what he says about women being the biggest &amp;quot;tribe&amp;quot; of them all is correct because if all the women decided to ban together under one common goal, they could deny the men everything until they got what they wanted. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This is unrealistic, though, because to make it effective, most if not all women would have to have a common goal to reform&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, and (especially at that time), it appears that not all women cared enough to have a political say in things, etc. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;So, Abigail Adams is pretty much awesome, right?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; In these letters we’ve got her threatening to start a rebellion if the ladies are ignored. Obviously, she is joking to a certain extent, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;her use of the patriot’s rhetoric is interesting: “we will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation (128).”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Sounds familiar, but John Adams conveniently ignores her fair points, though he does pay the ladies a “compliment” about how their “Tribe is more numerous and powerful than all the rest.” He throws back a few snappy one-liners and shows he can use hot button words too, particularly about “the Despotism of the Peticoat.” &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Still, Abigail gets the best line: “That your sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit no dispute.” It seems that though it is acceptable for women to have political sentiment, it doesn’t mean men will necessarily take it seriously. How surprising. I’m sure Abigail was quite objectionable to that dismissal and quite loud about it too. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Adams household! I&amp;#039;ll bring the popcorn!&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn’t realize Abigail Adams was such a strong women. In her correspondence to her husband, John Adams, she was determined that he “remember the ladies.” She argues that if attention is not paid to the ladies that they will foment a rebellion and not hold themselves bound by any laws in which they have no voice, or representation. This is an extremely strong stance to take and one for which I doubt many women could take. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am curious of how much leeway Abigail Adams had based on who she was and who she was married to, if a unknown poor colonial women had been so outward about her rights, what would have happened? At the same time, Abigail Adams had a great deal of power in her household when her husband was away, that had to have impacted her views as well&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Erin makes a really good point- I also wonder if Abigail&amp;#039;s courage to voice her opinion and strength of character is a result of her social standing and also the fact that John was away from home for periods of time. I wonder if this is an example of the male head of household (in this case, John) giving his wife more liberty to run the farm (or plantation, maybe)while he was away, similar to what we talked about in class? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I really also like Abigail as a person, and I think her marriage to John is very interesting, as revealed in the letters. I wonder how typical their marriage was of the period?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; They both seem to respect each other quite a bit, while not being afraid to be humourous or candid in their own individual opinions. One of my favorite lines is when John states, in response to Abigail&amp;#039;s request that he &amp;quot;Remember the Ladies&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented.- This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out.&amp;quot; Abigail seems to be a very determined and energetic woman- I think it would have been really neat and interesting to have known her. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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As much as this correspondence speaks to Abigail&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;sauciness,&amp;quot; I think &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it paints an interesting portrait of their relationship.  They seem to have a very clever, teasing tone with one another.  This sort of correspondence really seems to fit in with the archetypal perception of the era, with everyone feeling empowered by new freedoms, but I wonder how typical the Adamses were&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; in the colonies.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Did everyone read the line about the &amp;quot;first intimation that another Tribe...&amp;quot; as being sort of jokingly mocking?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- erin b&lt;br /&gt;
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Just wanted to say, I love Abigial Adams. Imagine if every woman of the time had her education, relationship with John, it&amp;#039;d be amazing. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was really neat that Abigail Adams was able to write to her husband with her terms. The fact that their relationship in that time period was on that level was interesting. Although John Adams shot her idea down, he gave it some thought. Not many men would even listen to their wives about political stuff such as this. Clearly, the Adams’ marriage was different from many of those in the Revolutionary time. I also enjoyed that the little section included the letter from Abigail to John and back, and then Abigail&amp;#039;s letter to her friend Mercy.–Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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Well it goes without saying that I loved these letters...I mean how could you not! But it was really refreshing to read the correspondence between John and Abigail it did not seem as dated and formal as some of the other correspondence we have read. There seemed to be a genuine ease and mutual respect for one another that was prevalent throughout; even when John gently shot her down basically. But I guess we can comfort ourselves with the hope that she probably gave him hell when he  came home for not &amp;quot;remembering the ladies&amp;quot; I feel like every week the women become a bit more brazen in their correspondence and various writings, I love it!&lt;br /&gt;
--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Benjamin Rush, “Thoughts upon female education,” 1787 (Philadelphia) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found it interesting how Benjamin Rush considered a sound female education to be a &amp;quot;domestic education&amp;quot;.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; He believed women needed to be &amp;quot;trained to manage efficient households, and as mothers, they had to raise virtuous citizens.&amp;quot; (Woloch, 130) When he used the word &amp;quot;trained&amp;quot;, he seemed to be implying that someone else would train women in their duties, meaning the men would. I found it ironic that Rush said, &amp;quot;It becomes us [the men] therefore to prepare them [women], by a suitable education, for the discharge of this most important duty of mothers.&amp;quot; (Woloch, 131)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; What makes men so qualified to teach women how to do domestic and motherly duties, when they have no idea what those duties entail? Rush and other men felt it was their obligation to teach women to do jobs they were already doing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also felt as though Rush assumed women could not do any of the jobs/talents he listed, such as learning the English language, or bookkeeping. I have a feeling that Rush and other men were under the impression that motherly and domestic duties were simple to understand and easy to do, yet I think Rush had never heard the saying &amp;quot;easier said than done.&amp;quot; ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought it was interesting how Benjamin Rush directed his argument and his speech to the &amp;quot;Gentlemen&amp;quot; in the audience, even though he was discussing female education&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and what he thought should be done or corrected in the present education systems in order to better prepare women for their roles as wives and mothers. I think this is evidence that the men were still thought to be &amp;quot;responsible&amp;quot; for their wives and daughters- society at this time still seems to be very much a patriarchal one by reading what Benjamin Rush has to say. I suppose it will still be a while (perhaps not until the early-to-mid 19th Century would be my guess, when you have a lot of reform movements, among them education reforms)before women have more of a &amp;quot;voice&amp;quot; in their own education. Here, the females seem to play a &amp;quot;secondary role&amp;quot; to that of the Gentlemen, even though they are the ones receiving the education. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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Thoughts upon Female Education is addressed (for the most part) to men, post Revolutionary War, advocating the increase in female education. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Since it was addressed to men, the benefits of an educated female were directed towards the male concerns of economic, political, religious, and social logic that would thus persuade them that this education would be good (for the men).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   He stated that by educating females they would be helpful to their husbands in their business and personal affairs, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;they would be “an agreeable companion for a sensible man” (132), it would prevent superstition, they would be better suited for domestic affairs and rearing of the children, and that “the government of them will be easy and agreeable” (133).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also found it humorous that among these sensible arguments, the advocating for dance within education was important because it “promotes health and renders the figure and motions of the body easy and agreeable”. (132)  Among these rational thoughts of intelligence, handiness, and, social morality, that a woman’s figure would be as important as the rest and ought to be addressed in their education was interesting and amusing. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Judith Sargent Murray, 1790, “on the Equality of the Sexes” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Taylor &amp;amp; Duffin Report Molly Brant&amp;#039;s Opinions and Influence, 1778 Daniel Claus assesses Molly Brant&amp;#039;s Influence, 1779==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Both Taylor and Duffin’s report and Daniel Claus’s assessment indicate that the British viewed Molly Brant as a vital political connection&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; as she represented British interests to Native Americans. As seen in Taylor and Duffin’s report, the fact that the British gave Molly Brant all the money she wanted shows their high opinion of her. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Brant was also powerful within Native American communities&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. She persuaded a fickle chief to reaffirm his alliance to the British. Molly must have been a very intelligent woman to command the respect of both English and Native American leaders.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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== Esther DeBerdt Reed, “Sentiments of an American Woman,” 1780 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I admire women during the American Revolution because they took this opportunity to try to change things for themselves.  I think their experiences made them stronger and gave them a stronger sense of who they were outside of the home. They were not afraid to speak out.  They knew the purpose of this war and supported their families - even if that meant throwing themselves into harm&amp;#039;s way.  Esther Deberdt Reed did not want women to go unnoticed for their bravery in this war.  She doesn&amp;#039;s take away the bravery of men but men were the ones who were looked at as &amp;quot;the hero.&amp;quot;  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She said it beautifully when she wrote, &amp;quot;we should at least equal, and sometimes surpass them in our love for the public good.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I loved how Esther DeBerdt Reed spoke so strongly and patriotically. She believed that women could be as patriotic as men, even if they were not doing the same duties in the war.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I agree with what Marsha about what Reed wrote about &amp;quot;surpass[ing] them in our love for the public good.&amp;quot;  She believed that through strong patriotism and support for the country, the women could be active participants in the war, since they were not allowed to fight or take part in other areas of the war effort. She believed the men needed to know that the women were offering their help in any way possible. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;At the end of her writing, she writes, &amp;quot;Receive with a free hand our offering, the purest which can be presented to your virtue.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Although the women could not participate as much as they may have liked, they were still more than willing to support the men who were fighting for them, in any and all ways possible. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Thomas Jefferson’s Slaves Join the British, 1781 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Although this article was not very long, nor really an article it provided a lot of clues about the slaves of Jefferson. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This list definitely makes it appear as if Jefferson saw them as property.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Especially when he includes in the list the children of some of his slaves instead of saying “Name, ____’s daughter” or something to that extent he simply writes “Hanah’s child.” The names also bring to mind what we talked about in class last week about the naming conventions. The names on the list are more Anglican than African with names like Patty, Sam, and Lucy. The name Quomina is the only one that seems to stick out. This shows that Virginia was more like the Northern states in that respect.–Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Osborn, Camp Follower, Recalls the Revolution, 1837 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I found the writings from Sarah Osborn effective in studying women&amp;#039;s roles during the Revolutionary War. At a time when women were still seen as only belonging in the home, she followed her husband and the army throughout the colonies. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She performed domestic duties such as cleaning, mending clothing, and cooking for soldiers but was also seen as a member of the army.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The point I found most interesting was at the surrender in Yorktown when Sarah thought something bad had occurred, asked a question and recieved the reply, &amp;quot;Are not you soldier enough to know what it means?&amp;quot; I found this to mean the soldiers treated her as an equal and should know the rules of the army, &amp;quot;mans world&amp;quot;. Sarah Osborn broke traditional ideas of womens work in the eighteenth century and was able to see first hand the building of America. -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Jemison Views the Revolution ==&lt;br /&gt;
I liked the article that featured Mary Jemison&amp;#039;s views on the Revolution. The was in depth and described the actions of the Iroquois Indians in detail. I could tell that she accepted the Indians as her people when she said &amp;quot;my Indian brother&amp;quot;, and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;when she said &amp;quot;...&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;we&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; sustained no loss in the war...&amp;quot; She felt she was a part of the tribe and they were her family.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She describes how some Indians decided to go against the treaty that was made with the colonists to help the British fight. She describes many battles that were fought, and how ultimately many of her people suffered. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Mary Jemison&amp;#039;s view of the Revolution was really interesting especially since she shares the Indian perspective of the war. She points out how they broke their treaty with one side because the British told them the rebels would be beaten easily and gave them gifts. Mary basically implied that the Indians were bought with gifts to fight for the British. She states the Indians were &amp;quot;hired to commit depredations upon the whites, who had given them no offense. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She does not seem to agree with the decision to fight for the British. She does accept the Iroquois as her people even if she does not agree with the things they do.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;- LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;For as much as Mary Jemison’s appearance of aligning herself with the Iroquois through her speech such as “our Indians”, it almost seems tenuous and superficial as she also interchangeably uses distancing words such as “the Indians” or just “they”.  This fragile state of association is also shown by the fact that at first sign of food shortage, she quickly took her children and left the Iroquois.  This paragraph (third from the bottom) says nothing about her husband, friends, or the connections she had formed with the people in the Iroquois village and her concern about how they would have fared, and also the fact that she never went back.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think this article was interesting to see how the Iroquois women viewed the American Revolution and part the Iroquois played, but just as much, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think, maybe, that this article also should warn us about overstating her emotional connection to the Iroquois themselves?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Thomas Paine in 1775, from Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 288-289 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;As a modern reader, I found Thomas Paine’s essay very condescending. I also had difficulty locating the rights Thomas Paine admitted that women possessed, as indicated by the title. Paine spent most of the essay pitying women:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; “Cruel distempers attack their beauty- and the hour, which confirms their release from those, is perhaps the most melancholy of their lives. It robs them of the most essential characteristic of their sex (288).” This article did not acclaim a woman’s older years as a time of potentially more social respect and authority; instead Paine asserted that older women were very depressed because they lost their beauty.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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== An Anonymous Woman Claims Women&amp;#039;s Rights in 1780, from Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 293-294 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This passage while short in length summed up womens rights effectively stating women were stronger patriots then men. The writer is asking for equality even though women &amp;quot;[s]ometimes surpass them in our love for the public good.&amp;quot; Women surpassed men in their love for country and fight for freedom by willingly allowing their sons and husbands to fight and maybe die for their country. Did all women feel the same as this writer that they were willing to give up vain items (hair accessories) at the end of the Revolution just as they were able to stop drinking tea at the start of the Revolution? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the opinions of this woman who was defending her rights. She had good points to make including mentioning famous  heroines and when she said &amp;quot;...women have been seen forgetting the weakness of their sex, building new walls..&amp;quot; She is describing how women are strong and not only take on the burdens and stress of being a female and living day to day but also taking care of their families and those around them. -Amy Van Ness&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_5_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 5 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_5_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-09-24T07:05:22Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Grace Galloway’s diary, 1778-79, Philadelphia */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Comparative questions or comments ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Phillis Wheatley, 1768, An address to George III ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Phillis Wheatley had an extremely rare story. She was a slave who was taught by her owners to read and write, she was sent to Europe to publish her poems and was freed upon her return.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; What is more rare is that Phillis was not only literate but aware of the politics of the time, as shown in her address to George III&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. As a slave who was owned I wonder what parallels she drew between that and the colonies that were owned by England. – Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I do like Phillis Wheatley&amp;#039;s story.  I&amp;#039;m sure it was very rare to even have such education and praise, and to be sent to England to publish poetry for a white woman, so for a slave to achieve such heights is quite remarkable.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I also find the subject of her poem rather shocking, seeing as how she is/was a slave&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  To speak out against the king (or anyone) for that matter and be black AND a woman must have taken real courage.  - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eliza Wilkinson, Carolina Patriot, 1782 ==&lt;br /&gt;
This reading was very interesting. I felt that Eliza painted the British in a very harsh light (which I know was the point), but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;she just seemed like a bit of a hypocrite. One sentence really caught my eye: &amp;quot;The Americans are obliged to commit unavoidable acts of cruelty; the defense of their country requires it; you seek their lives and liberties, and they must either kill or be killed.&amp;quot; So, its ok for the Americans can be mean and cruel, but if the English are then that’s ten times worse?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Also in this reading, Eliza tells a bit of a story some man told her about someone, (I&amp;#039;m assuming the someone is an analogy for the British and his farm is an analogy for the Americans), encroaching on his farm taking more and more from him. And, at the end he asks, &amp;quot;is this not slavery?&amp;quot; Now that is pretty ridiculous because as a North Carolina planter, I&amp;#039;m sure he had slaves, or at the very least, neighbors who had slaves. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;So, as long as the Americans are not treated like slaves, then it is fine, but they can still have slaves of their own.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
One more sentence in this reading really caught my eye, When Eliza is talking about Homer and she says, &amp;quot;what contemptible EARTH WORMS these authors make us!&amp;quot; She is expressing her displeasure over not even having the liberty to think, and she says that that is all she wants. She writes of how the men would not want women to be a part of political matters, and she does not care. She wishes only to think for herself. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The Revolution seems to mark a period where women can start voicing political opinions without being attacked for it.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Eliza Wilkinson, at least in her letters, claimed the right to express her political sentiments and rages about how authors make women out to be weak and fit for nothing more than menial tasks, or in more visceral language, appearing as “contemptible &amp;#039;&amp;#039;earth worms&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (124).” &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Interestingly, she apparently had political discussions not just with her female friends, but with males as well. She talks about a conversation with a Patriot officer. Whether or not he took her opinions seriously, I don’t know, but the fact that he was willing to talk with her about politics suggests a change in attitude from earlier colonial times.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Of course, Eliza is an elite with a fair amount of power, giving her the opportunity and station to speak up. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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Eliza Wilkinson is rather bloodthirsty when she talks about how it is acceptable for &amp;quot;Americans&amp;quot; to be cruel to the enemy. I think it is funny how she talks about how everyone is equal but Americans are at the same time superior. I did like how she said that men should not restrict a woman&amp;#039;s right to think for herself. I liked her patriotism and the fact that she spoke her mind about what she thought of the revolution despite the fact that women are not supposed to think about such things.  - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Grace Galloway’s diary, 1778-79, Philadelphia ==&lt;br /&gt;
I thought &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it was rather interesting that Grace Galloway &amp;quot;resented the intrusion of politics into her personal life.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I feel like this may be the reason why it took women so long to start getting involved in &amp;quot;men&amp;#039;s affairs&amp;quot; because many women, like Grace, did not care for it. They would rather just be housewives and be content with that. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed Grace Galloways entry she seemed so stubborn and defiant! I loved it. It was interesting to read her entry in comparison to that of Eliza Wilkinson. Both women although on opposing sides had very strong opinions and seemed to have no qualms with sharing them. I was impressed by the fact that Grace stayed behind when her husband and daughter left for England (even her reasons might have been selfish!) The fact that Grace was penalized for her views was interesting I wonder if they would have persecuted her even if she had been apolitical just because of her husbands tory status which she would have been automatically associated with. &lt;br /&gt;
--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Abigail Adams, Remember the Ladies, 1776 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I love this letter&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;.  When Abigail wrote this letter to her husband she hoped that he would include women in the new code of laws.  She wasn&amp;#039;t afraid to say that if they were not recognized they would rebel.  He laughed at her request for women to be included in those laws.  She even wrote to her friend Mercy Warren, trying to get a petition going of their greviances.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;An interesting point was when Abigail wrote back to her husband and said, &amp;quot;we have it in our power not only to free ouselves but to subdue our masters.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  She was telling him that women had a lot more power than men realize.  By the power of persuation and a woman&amp;#039;s wit and charm, women could get their masters to submit to whatever they wanted.  Abigail was very &amp;quot;saucy&amp;quot;  and is not afraid to tell her husband what she thinks and admits she will fight against laws that have no representation for women. I like that Abigail saw this as a golden opportunity for women to seek out more liberties and express themselves in this new government these men were creating.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I particularly like how John writes, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;quot;But your letter was the first intimation that another tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented.&amp;quot; I have the feeling that he is kind of mocking her&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; by saying that this is the first he has ever heard of women being discontented with their social status. But, what he says about women being the biggest &amp;quot;tribe&amp;quot; of them all is correct because if all the women decided to ban together under one common goal, they could deny the men everything until they got what they wanted. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This is unrealistic, though, because to make it effective, most if not all women would have to have a common goal to reform&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;, and (especially at that time), it appears that not all women cared enough to have a political say in things, etc. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;So, Abigail Adams is pretty much awesome, right?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; In these letters we’ve got her threatening to start a rebellion if the ladies are ignored. Obviously, she is joking to a certain extent, but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;her use of the patriot’s rhetoric is interesting: “we will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation (128).”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Sounds familiar, but John Adams conveniently ignores her fair points, though he does pay the ladies a “compliment” about how their “Tribe is more numerous and powerful than all the rest.” He throws back a few snappy one-liners and shows he can use hot button words too, particularly about “the Despotism of the Peticoat.” &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Still, Abigail gets the best line: “That your sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit no dispute.” It seems that though it is acceptable for women to have political sentiment, it doesn’t mean men will necessarily take it seriously. How surprising. I’m sure Abigail was quite objectionable to that dismissal and quite loud about it too. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Adams household! I&amp;#039;ll bring the popcorn!&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I didn’t realize Abigail Adams was such a strong women. In her correspondence to her husband, John Adams, she was determined that he “remember the ladies.” She argues that if attention is not paid to the ladies that they will foment a rebellion and not hold themselves bound by any laws in which they have no voice, or representation. This is an extremely strong stance to take and one for which I doubt many women could take. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am curious of how much leeway Abigail Adams had based on who she was and who she was married to, if a unknown poor colonial women had been so outward about her rights, what would have happened? At the same time, Abigail Adams had a great deal of power in her household when her husband was away, that had to have impacted her views as well&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I think Erin makes a really good point- I also wonder if Abigail&amp;#039;s courage to voice her opinion and strength of character is a result of her social standing and also the fact that John was away from home for periods of time. I wonder if this is an example of the male head of household (in this case, John) giving his wife more liberty to run the farm (or plantation, maybe)while he was away, similar to what we talked about in class? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I really also like Abigail as a person, and I think her marriage to John is very interesting, as revealed in the letters. I wonder how typical their marriage was of the period?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; They both seem to respect each other quite a bit, while not being afraid to be humourous or candid in their own individual opinions. One of my favorite lines is when John states, in response to Abigail&amp;#039;s request that he &amp;quot;Remember the Ladies&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented.- This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out.&amp;quot; Abigail seems to be a very determined and energetic woman- I think it would have been really neat and interesting to have known her. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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As much as this correspondence speaks to Abigail&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;sauciness,&amp;quot; I think &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;it paints an interesting portrait of their relationship.  They seem to have a very clever, teasing tone with one another.  This sort of correspondence really seems to fit in with the archetypal perception of the era, with everyone feeling empowered by new freedoms, but I wonder how typical the Adamses were&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; in the colonies.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Did everyone read the line about the &amp;quot;first intimation that another Tribe...&amp;quot; as being sort of jokingly mocking?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- erin b&lt;br /&gt;
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Just wanted to say, I love Abigial Adams. Imagine if every woman of the time had her education, relationship with John, it&amp;#039;d be amazing. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought it was really neat that Abigail Adams was able to write to her husband with her terms. The fact that their relationship in that time period was on that level was interesting. Although John Adams shot her idea down, he gave it some thought. Not many men would even listen to their wives about political stuff such as this. Clearly, the Adams’ marriage was different from many of those in the Revolutionary time. I also enjoyed that the little section included the letter from Abigail to John and back, and then Abigail&amp;#039;s letter to her friend Mercy.–Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Benjamin Rush, “Thoughts upon female education,” 1787 (Philadelphia) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I found it interesting how Benjamin Rush considered a sound female education to be a &amp;quot;domestic education&amp;quot;.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; He believed women needed to be &amp;quot;trained to manage efficient households, and as mothers, they had to raise virtuous citizens.&amp;quot; (Woloch, 130) When he used the word &amp;quot;trained&amp;quot;, he seemed to be implying that someone else would train women in their duties, meaning the men would. I found it ironic that Rush said, &amp;quot;It becomes us [the men] therefore to prepare them [women], by a suitable education, for the discharge of this most important duty of mothers.&amp;quot; (Woloch, 131)&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; What makes men so qualified to teach women how to do domestic and motherly duties, when they have no idea what those duties entail? Rush and other men felt it was their obligation to teach women to do jobs they were already doing.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also felt as though Rush assumed women could not do any of the jobs/talents he listed, such as learning the English language, or bookkeeping. I have a feeling that Rush and other men were under the impression that motherly and domestic duties were simple to understand and easy to do, yet I think Rush had never heard the saying &amp;quot;easier said than done.&amp;quot; ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought it was interesting how Benjamin Rush directed his argument and his speech to the &amp;quot;Gentlemen&amp;quot; in the audience, even though he was discussing female education&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; and what he thought should be done or corrected in the present education systems in order to better prepare women for their roles as wives and mothers. I think this is evidence that the men were still thought to be &amp;quot;responsible&amp;quot; for their wives and daughters- society at this time still seems to be very much a patriarchal one by reading what Benjamin Rush has to say. I suppose it will still be a while (perhaps not until the early-to-mid 19th Century would be my guess, when you have a lot of reform movements, among them education reforms)before women have more of a &amp;quot;voice&amp;quot; in their own education. Here, the females seem to play a &amp;quot;secondary role&amp;quot; to that of the Gentlemen, even though they are the ones receiving the education. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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Thoughts upon Female Education is addressed (for the most part) to men, post Revolutionary War, advocating the increase in female education. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Since it was addressed to men, the benefits of an educated female were directed towards the male concerns of economic, political, religious, and social logic that would thus persuade them that this education would be good (for the men).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;   He stated that by educating females they would be helpful to their husbands in their business and personal affairs, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;they would be “an agreeable companion for a sensible man” (132), it would prevent superstition, they would be better suited for domestic affairs and rearing of the children, and that “the government of them will be easy and agreeable” (133).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I also found it humorous that among these sensible arguments, the advocating for dance within education was important because it “promotes health and renders the figure and motions of the body easy and agreeable”. (132)  Among these rational thoughts of intelligence, handiness, and, social morality, that a woman’s figure would be as important as the rest and ought to be addressed in their education was interesting and amusing. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Judith Sargent Murray, 1790, “on the Equality of the Sexes” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Taylor &amp;amp; Duffin Report Molly Brant&amp;#039;s Opinions and Influence, 1778 Daniel Claus assesses Molly Brant&amp;#039;s Influence, 1779==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Both Taylor and Duffin’s report and Daniel Claus’s assessment indicate that the British viewed Molly Brant as a vital political connection&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; as she represented British interests to Native Americans. As seen in Taylor and Duffin’s report, the fact that the British gave Molly Brant all the money she wanted shows their high opinion of her. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Brant was also powerful within Native American communities&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. She persuaded a fickle chief to reaffirm his alliance to the British. Molly must have been a very intelligent woman to command the respect of both English and Native American leaders.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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== Esther DeBerdt Reed, “Sentiments of an American Woman,” 1780 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I admire women during the American Revolution because they took this opportunity to try to change things for themselves.  I think their experiences made them stronger and gave them a stronger sense of who they were outside of the home. They were not afraid to speak out.  They knew the purpose of this war and supported their families - even if that meant throwing themselves into harm&amp;#039;s way.  Esther Deberdt Reed did not want women to go unnoticed for their bravery in this war.  She doesn&amp;#039;s take away the bravery of men but men were the ones who were looked at as &amp;quot;the hero.&amp;quot;  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She said it beautifully when she wrote, &amp;quot;we should at least equal, and sometimes surpass them in our love for the public good.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I loved how Esther DeBerdt Reed spoke so strongly and patriotically. She believed that women could be as patriotic as men, even if they were not doing the same duties in the war.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I agree with what Marsha about what Reed wrote about &amp;quot;surpass[ing] them in our love for the public good.&amp;quot;  She believed that through strong patriotism and support for the country, the women could be active participants in the war, since they were not allowed to fight or take part in other areas of the war effort. She believed the men needed to know that the women were offering their help in any way possible. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;At the end of her writing, she writes, &amp;quot;Receive with a free hand our offering, the purest which can be presented to your virtue.&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Although the women could not participate as much as they may have liked, they were still more than willing to support the men who were fighting for them, in any and all ways possible. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Thomas Jefferson’s Slaves Join the British, 1781 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Although this article was not very long, nor really an article it provided a lot of clues about the slaves of Jefferson. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;This list definitely makes it appear as if Jefferson saw them as property.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Especially when he includes in the list the children of some of his slaves instead of saying “Name, ____’s daughter” or something to that extent he simply writes “Hanah’s child.” The names also bring to mind what we talked about in class last week about the naming conventions. The names on the list are more Anglican than African with names like Patty, Sam, and Lucy. The name Quomina is the only one that seems to stick out. This shows that Virginia was more like the Northern states in that respect.–Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Osborn, Camp Follower, Recalls the Revolution, 1837 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I found the writings from Sarah Osborn effective in studying women&amp;#039;s roles during the Revolutionary War. At a time when women were still seen as only belonging in the home, she followed her husband and the army throughout the colonies. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She performed domestic duties such as cleaning, mending clothing, and cooking for soldiers but was also seen as a member of the army.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The point I found most interesting was at the surrender in Yorktown when Sarah thought something bad had occurred, asked a question and recieved the reply, &amp;quot;Are not you soldier enough to know what it means?&amp;quot; I found this to mean the soldiers treated her as an equal and should know the rules of the army, &amp;quot;mans world&amp;quot;. Sarah Osborn broke traditional ideas of womens work in the eighteenth century and was able to see first hand the building of America. -Megan W. &lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Jemison Views the Revolution ==&lt;br /&gt;
I liked the article that featured Mary Jemison&amp;#039;s views on the Revolution. The was in depth and described the actions of the Iroquois Indians in detail. I could tell that she accepted the Indians as her people when she said &amp;quot;my Indian brother&amp;quot;, and &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;when she said &amp;quot;...&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;we&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; sustained no loss in the war...&amp;quot; She felt she was a part of the tribe and they were her family.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; She describes how some Indians decided to go against the treaty that was made with the colonists to help the British fight. She describes many battles that were fought, and how ultimately many of her people suffered. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Mary Jemison&amp;#039;s view of the Revolution was really interesting especially since she shares the Indian perspective of the war. She points out how they broke their treaty with one side because the British told them the rebels would be beaten easily and gave them gifts. Mary basically implied that the Indians were bought with gifts to fight for the British. She states the Indians were &amp;quot;hired to commit depredations upon the whites, who had given them no offense. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;She does not seem to agree with the decision to fight for the British. She does accept the Iroquois as her people even if she does not agree with the things they do.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;- LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;For as much as Mary Jemison’s appearance of aligning herself with the Iroquois through her speech such as “our Indians”, it almost seems tenuous and superficial as she also interchangeably uses distancing words such as “the Indians” or just “they”.  This fragile state of association is also shown by the fact that at first sign of food shortage, she quickly took her children and left the Iroquois.  This paragraph (third from the bottom) says nothing about her husband, friends, or the connections she had formed with the people in the Iroquois village and her concern about how they would have fared, and also the fact that she never went back.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I think this article was interesting to see how the Iroquois women viewed the American Revolution and part the Iroquois played, but just as much, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think, maybe, that this article also should warn us about overstating her emotional connection to the Iroquois themselves?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Thomas Paine in 1775, from Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 288-289 ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;As a modern reader, I found Thomas Paine’s essay very condescending. I also had difficulty locating the rights Thomas Paine admitted that women possessed, as indicated by the title. Paine spent most of the essay pitying women:&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; “Cruel distempers attack their beauty- and the hour, which confirms their release from those, is perhaps the most melancholy of their lives. It robs them of the most essential characteristic of their sex (288).” This article did not acclaim a woman’s older years as a time of potentially more social respect and authority; instead Paine asserted that older women were very depressed because they lost their beauty.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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== An Anonymous Woman Claims Women&amp;#039;s Rights in 1780, from Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 293-294 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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This passage while short in length summed up womens rights effectively stating women were stronger patriots then men. The writer is asking for equality even though women &amp;quot;[s]ometimes surpass them in our love for the public good.&amp;quot; Women surpassed men in their love for country and fight for freedom by willingly allowing their sons and husbands to fight and maybe die for their country. Did all women feel the same as this writer that they were willing to give up vain items (hair accessories) at the end of the Revolution just as they were able to stop drinking tea at the start of the Revolution? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the opinions of this woman who was defending her rights. She had good points to make including mentioning famous  heroines and when she said &amp;quot;...women have been seen forgetting the weakness of their sex, building new walls..&amp;quot; She is describing how women are strong and not only take on the burdens and stress of being a female and living day to day but also taking care of their families and those around them. -Amy Van Ness&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_4_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 4 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_4_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-09-17T07:04:38Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Anne Hutchinson’s trial, 1637 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Cross-source questions/comments ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anne Bradstreet, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” ~1670 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;When I read Anne Bradstreet’s spiritual autobiography, I was amazed by the necessity of Puritans to deny their individual wants, needs, and rationale.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Anne described joining the church as ‘submitting’. When Anne was sick, she said God was trying to humble her. Then once God finally granted Anne children, she began a new struggle to extinguish their individuality and worked “till Christ bee formed in you [her children].”(pg 100) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Given this context, one can see that an individual thinking on his/her own, such as Anne Hutchinson, was very radical and seen as dangerous&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was surpised in this article that Anne Bradstreet considered whether the Catholic doctrine was right when she herself was a Puritan&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (she decides to stick with her Puritan beliefs) but that moment of questioning was interesting to me, especially given the violent history that Catholics and Protestants had in the previous century and the mistrust that each side had for the other. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anne Hutchinson’s trial, 1637 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Anne Hutchinson is now one of my top 10 favorite women in history. The overall summary of her trial is stated on page 103: she was charged with dishonoring the community fathers, of holding meetings at her home in a manner inappropriate to her sex, and of insulting ministers at a private conference by accusing them of laboring under a Covenant of Works. Anne Hutchinson then admits having a revelation where God told her that he would destroy her prosecutors. This was considered heresy. Anne was then sentenced to banishment from the jurisdiction. Overall, I just found the trial to be hilarious. Some of the accusations were such a stretch.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I especially enjoyed the accusation that Anne broke the law of the fifth commandment, honoring your mother and father. It took me a minute to figure out that that they actually thought that this meant honoring the “fathers of the commonwealth” (seriously!? …Yes) the governor states on page 105, “if they be the fathers of the commonwealth, and they of another religion, if you entertain them then you dishonor your parents and are justly punishable.” …wow….&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
I was also surprised at how blunt the puritan men were about the status of women. When Anne Hutchinson was being sentenced, the governor states: “Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court you hear is that you are banished from out of our jurisdiction as &amp;#039;&amp;#039;being a women not fit for our society&amp;#039;&amp;#039;….”  Harsh words. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I had one main question when reading the trial, I had no idea what a Covenant of Works was.  I googled it, and I came up with this definition:&lt;br /&gt;
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The covenant of works is God&amp;#039;s promise to Adam. In return for perfect obedience, he would merit God&amp;#039;s reward. The reward in this covenant does not result from grace; rather, it is a debt owed to Adam for keeping his part of the covenant. Unfortunately, Adam failed to keep the covenant and &amp;quot;after the fall, the free gifts on which salvation depends were withdrawn, and natural gifts corrupted and defiled&amp;quot; (Calvin). [[http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/defoe/puritanism.html#works]]&lt;br /&gt;
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However, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am still confused as to what Anne Hutchinson was being charged with. She was charged with accusing ministers of laboring under a Covenant of Works. What exactly does that mean?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also confused about what that means. I know Dr. M said in class that she was charged with saying bad things about the ministers and going against the church so I&amp;#039;m guessing that is what that means. -- Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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: I am no theologian but I will try to answer some of these questions as best I can, anyone else feel free to jump in. It is my understanding that Puritans believed that God no longer spoke to anyone in direct revelation and that His last word to people was through the Bible. Anne Hutchinson claims that God spoke to her directly and the Puritans believe that kind of claim to be heresy. So that is what they get Hutchinson on. Quickly defining Covenant of Works...In the Old Testament God makes a covenant with His people that if they obey Him they will be saved (so they are saved through their actions i.e. works). For Christians the Covenant of Works no longer is necessary because of Christ&amp;#039;s life, death, resurrection He makes a new covenant with His people and that is one of salvation through grace (the grace of God that is) stepping in and saving people.&lt;br /&gt;
:Hutchinson is also under scrutiny because of the Puritan belief in predestination that she challenged; arguing that if we were predestined to go to Heaven or Hell then it would not matter what ones actions were in the slightest. She also criticized many preachers of emphasizing the importance of good works over salvation through grace, implying (as some saw it) that she was saying that these preachers were saying that salvation was through works (covenant of works) rather than salvation through grace (covenant of grace / new covenant). Hope that helped some. --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 21:54, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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Regarding Anne Hutchinson&amp;#039;s Trial&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I find it interesting that whenever the governor asks her a question that she rebukes it.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  In particular, when the governor asks her why she keeps a meeting at her house on a set day.  She responds that is lawful for her to do so.  Implying that she has not broken any law and then puts &amp;quot;unlawful act&amp;quot; in his lap by saying &amp;quot;can you find a warrant for yourself and condemn me for the same thing?&amp;quot;  Meaning do you not have a religious meetings in your home. She is witty and clever with her words in proving her case.  The governor seems to stumble to find fault towards her act of meeting.  With each question the governor asked she has a rebuttal.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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Anne Hutchinson’s transgressions seemed to take on a deeper significance to Puritan leaders because of her gender. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Not only did she express a different, radical theology, she, a woman, preached this theology to men.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; When the court asked her if she taught men, Anne Hutchinson artfully replied that she was teaching the men of the court at that very moment. To these leaders, Anne Hutchinson threatened their religion and their patriarchal social order where women never had authority over men.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The transcript of Anne Hutchinson’s trial had me wondering about the recording techniques of the 17th century. How did they go about making courtroom transcripts? It’s not like they had recording equipment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I really doubt anyone could have written fast enough to keep up with everything everyone was saying. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;You’d have to be the Jesse Owens of scribes to keep up with some of those long monologues of Anne Hutchinson.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Did they have several people recording at the same time? Or maybe the transcriber just asked everyone to speak really slowly? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;All kidding aside, that brings up issues of how accurate and trustworthy these trial records are.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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: While I am not familiar with stenography in the colonial court systems I&amp;#039;m willing to bet that the stenographer is writing everything in shorthand (seeing that shorthand has been around for many centuries) so that could aid someone in writing down the court proceedings. --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 21:32, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I have to admit I can almost understand why the Puritans banished Anne Hutchinson, she completely undermined everything that there society stood for. Not to mention that judging by the trial transcripts she was far more intelligent then most of the members of the court. Not only were her religious ideas extreme, she was the antithesis of the typical Puritan female. She was a leader amongst her followers, and had she remained in the Massachusetts Bay Colony her influence might have affected the entire balance of things in the colonies especially that between men and women.---Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lancashire, England Women’s Meeting structure, Quaker women in 1675 ==&lt;br /&gt;
The Quakers seemed to give equality more of a chance than Puritans. This document reiterates many common themes of female inferiority. Women were weaker and they needed to stay at home with their families. However, this epistle ends in a way that really strengthened women. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The female authors of this document asserted that God could make the weak strong and even used a masculine, military analogy. Puritans would never refer to women as “valliant Souldiers of Jesus Christ” or arm them with “Armour of Light” and “the Sword of his Eternal Spirit.”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (pg 113) -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Although the Quakers did give women a more active role, it seemed like the women&amp;#039;s meetings were more for the purpose of policing each other.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; They had the &amp;quot;authority&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;Judge&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Condemn&amp;quot; those who had done something wrong. So, were all of these matters dealt with just among the women&amp;#039;s meetings or were there some offenses that were brought before the men&amp;#039;s and women&amp;#039;s meetings jointly? There is also a reference to the &amp;quot;new Covenant.&amp;quot; Is this a distinct belief difference as opposed to the &amp;quot;covenant of works&amp;quot; (referred to in Anne Hutchinson&amp;#039;s trial)? -Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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: I agree with much of your interpretation here. At first blush it seems like that Quaker women have more freedom (and they certainly do) when the text is analyzed more closely their power only seems to extend to other women and children, although that may just be my reading of it. As a theological aside I will attempt to answer your last question. The &amp;quot;New Covenant&amp;quot; theologically speaking is the covenant Christ made with His Church and that is one of salvation through grace and not by works. So yes, the new covenant is in direct opposition to the the covenant of works (which is often associated with the old covenant that was based on obedience to Mosaic Law). I think in this part of the trial they are having a semantic argument over the definition of &amp;quot;covenant of works&amp;quot; so it can be a little confusing if you are not familiar with the term. Hope I didn&amp;#039;t just make things more confusing. --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 21:28, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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In agreeing with the others, they do seem to have some power and control, but yyes it is limited to other women, children, and womanly duties.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The emphasis placed on religion and God is so clear and evident it just makes me wonder what were the woman of the time in Virginia or Maryland thinking and doing.  Did they value these roles as much even though they may not have been so devoutly religious?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I think so.  -  Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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== David Brainerd, 1746, account of the Great Awakening ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The ideas ministers had during the Great Awakening seize to amaze me, as in David Brainerd&amp;#039;s case he really did believe he was saving the young Indian woman. &amp;quot;This was indeed a suprising day of God&amp;#039;s power, and seemed enough to convince an atheist of the truth, importance, and power of God&amp;#039;s word.&amp;quot; He believed her not being able to control herself nor speak to anyone was a sign that God had reached her and the Anglo way of life was coming forward in Native American culture.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; My question is did Native Americans really wish to conform? Or did they see it as a way to avoid confrontation, when they were now outnumbered by the settlers? But overall did ministers think they were reaching all the people they saw as &amp;quot;uncivilized&amp;quot;?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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In answering Megan above, I don&amp;#039;t think the Natives probably cared at all to reform.  Most probably didn&amp;#039;t even understand.  There were so many cultural and language barriers, they probably just did what would appease them.  And just as in Brainerd&amp;#039;s case, the missionaries probably often misunderstood what was happening anyhow.  - christine leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like as he is writing this, Brainerd is being very condescending of the Natives and would look down upon them from his high religious seat. I am just speculating, but I would not think that the relatively new word of God would convince the Native couple to get back together (in the 2nd paragraph). Brainerd was probably misinterpreting the situation, which probably happened a lot. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Narrative of Old Elizabeth, published in 1863 when she was 97, about her religious conversion in the 1770s. ==&lt;br /&gt;
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When I was reading this passage I kind of felt like she was justifying the things that had gone wrong in her life, and almost making exucses for God. It seemed as though she was trying to make sense of the times when she felt she got the short end of the stick, for example, when she coudln&amp;#039;t conceive for several years, or when she had poor health. It&amp;#039;s as if she were trying to talk herself into thinking that God had a purpose in it all, and that it wasn&amp;#039;t just random bad luck. I felt sorry for her in a way.--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 21:01, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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First of all, my good gracious how did she live so long, 97 yeard old in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Her story is very unique and I&amp;#039;ve never heard of anyone like her. It is sad that she had so much misery, followed by uplift, but at least she got the uplift and 97 years of life!! - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this reading interesting because she was an African American evangelist woman. It seemed like all the typical constraints were on her of race and gender, but she still managed to push through and spread the word of God to her followers. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Elizabeth Godman lawsuit (1653); Elizabeth Godman tried for witchcraft, 1655 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I understand that it was a completely different time and that the Puritans and other early colonists believed in witchcraft. But, when I started reading this story it almost made me laugh.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Mr. Atwaters had dreams about witches while his son was sick so that made him think that a witch made his son sick. It just seems so crazy to me. I was also surprised that Elizabeth could sue her neighbors for calling her a witch. I guess since this instance was before the 1692 witch trials in Salem Village, maybe it wasn&amp;#039;t taken so seriously. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Why do you think Elizabeth Godman&amp;#039;s situation was different from the witch trials in Salem Village?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;--Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the claims against Elizabeth Godman along with &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;the fact that she filed a lawsuit was interesting&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Many of the people claiming she was a witch seemed to think that their pigs or chickens died because of her; because she was a witch. I thought that was comical. I liked the fact that she was able to sue them too. The time of the trial was before the Salem Witch trials so maybe that is why the claims did not have enough justification. I am sure if they were made in 1692 she would have lost the case. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading the trial transcripts, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was almost positive that an indiscretion had taken place between Elizabeth Godman and Mr. Bishop. It sounded like there might have been an affair, and in order to save himself from the wrath of his wife, he accused Godman of being a witch&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Of course, I&amp;#039;m sure that nobody had to twist Mrs. Bishop&amp;#039;s arm about accusing Godman of being a witch. I think there was definately some foul play and jealousy at hand. --[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 21:06, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I was almost impressed with the fact that Elizabeth Godman was able to file a slander lawsuit against those who called her a witch. This seemed to be an almost rational thought in what was a sea of irrational behavior and unjust thinking. Of course  I don&amp;#039;t know how far her lawsuit actually got her. The inconsistencies and hypocrisies in all the trials is comical. The evidence used against her was so bizarre. You have to wonder if some of these people really did believe what they were saying or if they were making accusations out of spite or malice. They all seemed so prone to paranoia about anything that might deviate slightly from the religious norm.--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Bridget Bishop convicted of witchcraft 1692; “Casco Girls” accuse George Burroughs, 1692 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The Salem witch trials I could not help but wonder where they came up with the ridiculous accusations, pigs dying after a visit from a women equaled her being a witch, did any of the citizens ever consider alternatives? I think the magistrate felt they were given a power and to secure general security they would convict a woman for looking at a child the wrong way or muttering a prayer seen as an incantation. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In the case of Bridget Bishop, I did wonder did she wish to be seen as a witch?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Or did all of the offenses against her make the claim of her being a witch come true? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that they really do jump to conclusions. It is like they think there could be no other possible reason why the pigs died. I think it goes back to what we talked about in class, that maybe the accusers were accusing people of witchcraft to show that they are holy. Because only the truly holy people could recognize evil? Religion is such a huge influence on the NE colonists. I think that cases like Bridget Bishop and George Burroughs show just how strong that influence was. --Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting in the trial of Bridget Bishop (as well as other witchcraft trials) one of the big arguments for her to be a witch was the illness and death of Children.  That&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; a witch is shown to be the very opposite of the proper woman (who gives birth to children) she therefore it connected with the deaths or illnesses of children.  She is the corrupted version of the perfect wife, mother, and woman inverting all morality and virtue.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  She is often also physically corrupted as in Bishops case upon examination they found a “preternatural teat” that ceased to exist but a few short hours later.  With Halloween coming upon us soon, it is interesting to think about how these trials may have affected our ideas of such a perverted creature and her connection to the inverted holiday. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker, wealthy Philadelphia woman, diary – 1758-1794 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker&amp;#039;s diary entries really reflect the discrepancies between the experiences of different colonial women, as a result of race, social and class status, geographic location,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; etc. Elizabeth is described as a &amp;quot;wealthy Philadelphian&amp;quot;, and thus I think her accounts and experiences differ dramatically from those of other women- not just women living in different regions or areas (i.e., the Southern colonies), but also in her own town. For example, Karin Wulf describes the &amp;quot;Hucksters&amp;quot; in Philadelphia who were &amp;quot;at the lower end of the scale&amp;quot; (p.101) and would purchase second-hand or damaged goods and then re-sell them on the city streets as a way to earn money. Conversely, Elizabeth describes the work that others are doing for her: &amp;quot;Phebe Morris here this Afternoon fitting a Gown for me...&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;George Baker drove up Polly Campbell, whome I have hir&amp;#039;d this day to tind my little Henry...&amp;quot;. She also describes the frequent comings-and-goings of different maids in her service. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Her experiences are in stark contrast to the every-day experiences and lives of the female slaves on Landon Carter&amp;#039;s Virginia plantation,whom he refers to as &amp;quot;sordid creatures&amp;quot; (p.83).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Carter states, &amp;quot;I have ordered the wench to be tyed up and severely slashed to keep her care if possible; but I am afraid it will not be long enough remembered.&amp;quot; (p.83) From these excerpts, the reader can safely conclude that Elizabeth was leading a very different life than those of African American female slaves. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Landon Carter complains about his female slaves (1771-1773) ==&lt;br /&gt;
You can read throughout his complaints, he sees himself to be superior to them, calling them &amp;quot;absurd&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;lazy and careless.&amp;quot;  As he complains about how someone must be there when they are cutting down the tobacco or they will do it wrong.  Is someone around to show his slaves how to properly do it or explain to them?  I&amp;#039;m sure the complaints of slaves being in pain are legitimate and Landon Carter is just not sympathetic to their aches and pains.  He disregards their complaints and treats them like work horses.  He says they need a &amp;quot;good whipping&amp;quot; and that will make the pain go away as it cured Mrs. Dairy Mary&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;invisible pain in her hip.&amp;quot;  Then eventually he admits that no matter what the punishment they still will not work well because they are &amp;quot;negros&amp;quot;.  I think that during that time that black slaves were looked at inferior to the white colonists but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;what was the degree of treatment of slaves? Was Landon Carter&amp;#039;s assumption about black slaves generally agreed upon or was he the exception?  When I read George Washington Assigns Work to His Slaves, there wasn&amp;#039;t any comments about slaves being mistreated.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Landon Carter’s diary showed that he was frustrated with what he saw as the stupidity and laziness of his slaves. I think it is more likely that these slaves were engaged in a passive aggressive resistance to his authority. A slave woman such as Sicely, the cowkeeper, had very little control over her own life, but she could ruin her master’s day by allowing a cow to wander into a swamp.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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Landon Carter must have been extremely annoyed and fed up with his female slaves to record their laziness and his agitation in his journal so often. He mentioned the women being over dramatic, claiming they are sick but in actuality are not, and being bored with their work so mistakes are made.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; To me,he doesn&amp;#039;t seem like a &amp;quot;typical&amp;quot; southern slave owner. Most would force their slaves to do work and not except excuses for their laziness. He seemed to be giving up in his last entry claiming that he can&amp;#039;t do anything to train them to do their work.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Landon Carter is a whiner.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; He complains when his slaves make mistakes and whips them to help them remember to do their jobs right. I do not understand how he can think that will make them work harder. To me that would just make me angry and I would do worse then I did before. I guess maybe he tried to help Mary Mcginis daughter but that was not really help. When things do not get done it could be for another reason then they were lazy. He is so arrogant and feel superior to his slaves. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== George Washington&amp;#039;s slave list (1786) and slave work assignments (1786-88) ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought it was a bit odd the way some of the work assignments were referred to. The reference &amp;quot;all the plows...were plowing the Corn and the Hoes weeding it&amp;quot; seems like the people doing the work were just pieces of equipment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; - Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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I found George Washington’s listing his slaves to be rather interesting. He seemed to be very much aware of all of them. He knew all of their names, though of course the majority had no surnames, and jobs. He also knew which children went with what parent, listed by their mother not father, and how old these children were. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Were all slave owners so knowledgeable of their slaves? Or was this common practice, along the lines of knowing all the details of your property? It did seem like GW was simply cataloging his property more than anything, particularly when he listed some slaves as blind, lame, or old.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eulalia Perez Recalls her work in a mission in Spanish CA in early 19th Century (1877) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Why did Father Sanchez want Perez to marry Juan Marine after she past the age of child bearing (which I assume since she stated that all of her daughter&amp;#039;s were married)?  I suppose I just assumed that marriage was more important for the younger generation.  I&amp;#039;m sure Father Sanchez honestly thought it would better her life I just never thought of the idea of arranging marriages for older widows. - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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== Karin Wulf, “Women’s Work in Colonial Philadelphia,” 2000 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Karin Wulf concludes her article by stating that &amp;quot;work&amp;quot;, especially for women of 18th Century Philadelphia and other urban cities, became &amp;quot;an important source of personal and community identity.&amp;quot; (p.103) She continues by arguing that many workers identified with their work, especially if it &amp;quot;enmeshed them in networks of obligation and association.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am wondering if a colonial woman&amp;#039;s perception and close identification of her work as being related to her place in the larger community is resulting from a sense of wanting to feel &amp;quot;needed&amp;quot; by others, especially if the woman who was working (either outside or inside the home) was single or a widow&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Perhaps work offered such women a means of fulfillment- a way to feel that they had an obligation and responsibility to fulfill to the larger community. I&amp;#039;m not sure if I am making much sense. I guess I am thinking that upon the death of their husbands, or if they were single and did not have any children, working allowed such women to feel that they were &amp;quot;needed&amp;quot; (I can&amp;#039;t think of a better word)and could contribute to the community and society in their own way. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think exploring the emotions and motivations of the women to take up work would be very interesting, though probably difficult to research.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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Karin Wulf describes how women made money despite the fact that they were not really  to work the men were. Retailing was huge for women in colonial times. Wulf says that women could have made up half of the retailing business and I find that interesting because there are still more women in retail then there are men. I like how she pointed out that even rich widows worked shopkeepers at high end stores. Women from all social classes made money. Most women needed income after they became widows because their husbands did not leave them their entire inheritance. Most of that would go to there sons. I like this article because we are not taught that much about how women made money in colonial times. -LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this article on Women’s work in Colonial Philadelphia was very interesting as we often do not think of the roles women played being connected to independently generating money during this colonial period.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think the key phrase from this section is on page 98 where the author states that a problem with assuming women’s sole source of income was that it “casts women as only passive recipients of wealth, rather than generators of wealth.”  Indeed the author goes about disproving this idea showing how women were capable of generating their own income capable of sustaining them and their families upon the death of their husbands or if they chose never to marry.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Work consisted of gender specific works, such as was connected with the family and home, and nongender specific works that could be picked up from the trade of husband or father. Whichever the case, this article shows women as being productive citizens, contributing to their own wealth as well as that of their community and doing so, it is an important contribution to the study of women in colonial America. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_4_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 4 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_4_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-09-17T06:46:23Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Elizabeth Godman lawsuit (1653); Elizabeth Godman tried for witchcraft, 1655 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Cross-source questions/comments ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anne Bradstreet, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” ~1670 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;When I read Anne Bradstreet’s spiritual autobiography, I was amazed by the necessity of Puritans to deny their individual wants, needs, and rationale.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Anne described joining the church as ‘submitting’. When Anne was sick, she said God was trying to humble her. Then once God finally granted Anne children, she began a new struggle to extinguish their individuality and worked “till Christ bee formed in you [her children].”(pg 100) &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Given this context, one can see that an individual thinking on his/her own, such as Anne Hutchinson, was very radical and seen as dangerous&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was surpised in this article that Anne Bradstreet considered whether the Catholic doctrine was right when she herself was a Puritan&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (she decides to stick with her Puritan beliefs) but that moment of questioning was interesting to me, especially given the violent history that Catholics and Protestants had in the previous century and the mistrust that each side had for the other. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Anne Hutchinson’s trial, 1637 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Anne Hutchinson is now one of my top 10 favorite women in history. The overall summary of her trial is stated on page 103: she was charged with dishonoring the community fathers, of holding meetings at her home in a manner inappropriate to her sex, and of insulting ministers at a private conference by accusing them of laboring under a Covenant of Works. Anne Hutchinson then admits having a revelation where God told her that he would destroy her prosecutors. This was considered heresy. Anne was then sentenced to banishment from the jurisdiction. Overall, I just found the trial to be hilarious. Some of the accusations were such a stretch.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I especially enjoyed the accusation that Anne broke the law of the fifth commandment, honoring your mother and father. It took me a minute to figure out that that they actually thought that this meant honoring the “fathers of the commonwealth” (seriously!? …Yes) the governor states on page 105, “if they be the fathers of the commonwealth, and they of another religion, if you entertain them then you dishonor your parents and are justly punishable.” …wow….&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&lt;br /&gt;
I was also surprised at how blunt the puritan men were about the status of women. When Anne Hutchinson was being sentenced, the governor states: “Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court you hear is that you are banished from out of our jurisdiction as &amp;#039;&amp;#039;being a women not fit for our society&amp;#039;&amp;#039;….”  Harsh words. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I had one main question when reading the trial, I had no idea what a Covenant of Works was.  I googled it, and I came up with this definition:&lt;br /&gt;
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The covenant of works is God&amp;#039;s promise to Adam. In return for perfect obedience, he would merit God&amp;#039;s reward. The reward in this covenant does not result from grace; rather, it is a debt owed to Adam for keeping his part of the covenant. Unfortunately, Adam failed to keep the covenant and &amp;quot;after the fall, the free gifts on which salvation depends were withdrawn, and natural gifts corrupted and defiled&amp;quot; (Calvin). [[http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/defoe/puritanism.html#works]]&lt;br /&gt;
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However, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am still confused as to what Anne Hutchinson was being charged with. She was charged with accusing ministers of laboring under a Covenant of Works. What exactly does that mean?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I was also confused about what that means. I know Dr. M said in class that she was charged with saying bad things about the ministers and going against the church so I&amp;#039;m guessing that is what that means. -- Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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: I am no theologian but I will try to answer some of these questions as best I can, anyone else feel free to jump in. It is my understanding that Puritans believed that God no longer spoke to anyone in direct revelation and that His last word to people was through the Bible. Anne Hutchinson claims that God spoke to her directly and the Puritans believe that kind of claim to be heresy. So that is what they get Hutchinson on. Quickly defining Covenant of Works...In the Old Testament God makes a covenant with His people that if they obey Him they will be saved (so they are saved through their actions i.e. works). For Christians the Covenant of Works no longer is necessary because of Christ&amp;#039;s life, death, resurrection He makes a new covenant with His people and that is one of salvation through grace (the grace of God that is) stepping in and saving people.&lt;br /&gt;
:Hutchinson is also under scrutiny because of the Puritan belief in predestination that she challenged; arguing that if we were predestined to go to Heaven or Hell then it would not matter what ones actions were in the slightest. She also criticized many preachers of emphasizing the importance of good works over salvation through grace, implying (as some saw it) that she was saying that these preachers were saying that salvation was through works (covenant of works) rather than salvation through grace (covenant of grace / new covenant). Hope that helped some. --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 21:54, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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Regarding Anne Hutchinson&amp;#039;s Trial&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I find it interesting that whenever the governor asks her a question that she rebukes it.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  In particular, when the governor asks her why she keeps a meeting at her house on a set day.  She responds that is lawful for her to do so.  Implying that she has not broken any law and then puts &amp;quot;unlawful act&amp;quot; in his lap by saying &amp;quot;can you find a warrant for yourself and condemn me for the same thing?&amp;quot;  Meaning do you not have a religious meetings in your home. She is witty and clever with her words in proving her case.  The governor seems to stumble to find fault towards her act of meeting.  With each question the governor asked she has a rebuttal.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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Anne Hutchinson’s transgressions seemed to take on a deeper significance to Puritan leaders because of her gender. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Not only did she express a different, radical theology, she, a woman, preached this theology to men.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; When the court asked her if she taught men, Anne Hutchinson artfully replied that she was teaching the men of the court at that very moment. To these leaders, Anne Hutchinson threatened their religion and their patriarchal social order where women never had authority over men.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The transcript of Anne Hutchinson’s trial had me wondering about the recording techniques of the 17th century. How did they go about making courtroom transcripts? It’s not like they had recording equipment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; I really doubt anyone could have written fast enough to keep up with everything everyone was saying. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;You’d have to be the Jesse Owens of scribes to keep up with some of those long monologues of Anne Hutchinson.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Did they have several people recording at the same time? Or maybe the transcriber just asked everyone to speak really slowly? &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;All kidding aside, that brings up issues of how accurate and trustworthy these trial records are.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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: While I am not familiar with stenography in the colonial court systems I&amp;#039;m willing to bet that the stenographer is writing everything in shorthand (seeing that shorthand has been around for many centuries) so that could aid someone in writing down the court proceedings. --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 21:32, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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== Lancashire, England Women’s Meeting structure, Quaker women in 1675 ==&lt;br /&gt;
The Quakers seemed to give equality more of a chance than Puritans. This document reiterates many common themes of female inferiority. Women were weaker and they needed to stay at home with their families. However, this epistle ends in a way that really strengthened women. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The female authors of this document asserted that God could make the weak strong and even used a masculine, military analogy. Puritans would never refer to women as “valliant Souldiers of Jesus Christ” or arm them with “Armour of Light” and “the Sword of his Eternal Spirit.”&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; (pg 113) -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Although the Quakers did give women a more active role, it seemed like the women&amp;#039;s meetings were more for the purpose of policing each other.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; They had the &amp;quot;authority&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;Judge&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Condemn&amp;quot; those who had done something wrong. So, were all of these matters dealt with just among the women&amp;#039;s meetings or were there some offenses that were brought before the men&amp;#039;s and women&amp;#039;s meetings jointly? There is also a reference to the &amp;quot;new Covenant.&amp;quot; Is this a distinct belief difference as opposed to the &amp;quot;covenant of works&amp;quot; (referred to in Anne Hutchinson&amp;#039;s trial)? -Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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: I agree with much of your interpretation here. At first blush it seems like that Quaker women have more freedom (and they certainly do) when the text is analyzed more closely their power only seems to extend to other women and children, although that may just be my reading of it. As a theological aside I will attempt to answer your last question. The &amp;quot;New Covenant&amp;quot; theologically speaking is the covenant Christ made with His Church and that is one of salvation through grace and not by works. So yes, the new covenant is in direct opposition to the the covenant of works (which is often associated with the old covenant that was based on obedience to Mosaic Law). I think in this part of the trial they are having a semantic argument over the definition of &amp;quot;covenant of works&amp;quot; so it can be a little confusing if you are not familiar with the term. Hope I didn&amp;#039;t just make things more confusing. --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 21:28, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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In agreeing with the others, they do seem to have some power and control, but yyes it is limited to other women, children, and womanly duties.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;The emphasis placed on religion and God is so clear and evident it just makes me wonder what were the woman of the time in Virginia or Maryland thinking and doing.  Did they value these roles as much even though they may not have been so devoutly religious?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  I think so.  -  Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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== David Brainerd, 1746, account of the Great Awakening ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The ideas ministers had during the Great Awakening seize to amaze me, as in David Brainerd&amp;#039;s case he really did believe he was saving the young Indian woman. &amp;quot;This was indeed a suprising day of God&amp;#039;s power, and seemed enough to convince an atheist of the truth, importance, and power of God&amp;#039;s word.&amp;quot; He believed her not being able to control herself nor speak to anyone was a sign that God had reached her and the Anglo way of life was coming forward in Native American culture.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; My question is did Native Americans really wish to conform? Or did they see it as a way to avoid confrontation, when they were now outnumbered by the settlers? But overall did ministers think they were reaching all the people they saw as &amp;quot;uncivilized&amp;quot;?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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In answering Megan above, I don&amp;#039;t think the Natives probably cared at all to reform.  Most probably didn&amp;#039;t even understand.  There were so many cultural and language barriers, they probably just did what would appease them.  And just as in Brainerd&amp;#039;s case, the missionaries probably often misunderstood what was happening anyhow.  - christine leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I feel like as he is writing this, Brainerd is being very condescending of the Natives and would look down upon them from his high religious seat. I am just speculating, but I would not think that the relatively new word of God would convince the Native couple to get back together (in the 2nd paragraph). Brainerd was probably misinterpreting the situation, which probably happened a lot. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Narrative of Old Elizabeth, published in 1863 when she was 97, about her religious conversion in the 1770s. ==&lt;br /&gt;
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When I was reading this passage I kind of felt like she was justifying the things that had gone wrong in her life, and almost making exucses for God. It seemed as though she was trying to make sense of the times when she felt she got the short end of the stick, for example, when she coudln&amp;#039;t conceive for several years, or when she had poor health. It&amp;#039;s as if she were trying to talk herself into thinking that God had a purpose in it all, and that it wasn&amp;#039;t just random bad luck. I felt sorry for her in a way.--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 21:01, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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First of all, my good gracious how did she live so long, 97 yeard old in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Her story is very unique and I&amp;#039;ve never heard of anyone like her. It is sad that she had so much misery, followed by uplift, but at least she got the uplift and 97 years of life!! - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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I found this reading interesting because she was an African American evangelist woman. It seemed like all the typical constraints were on her of race and gender, but she still managed to push through and spread the word of God to her followers. -Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Elizabeth Godman lawsuit (1653); Elizabeth Godman tried for witchcraft, 1655 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I understand that it was a completely different time and that the Puritans and other early colonists believed in witchcraft. But, when I started reading this story it almost made me laugh.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Mr. Atwaters had dreams about witches while his son was sick so that made him think that a witch made his son sick. It just seems so crazy to me. I was also surprised that Elizabeth could sue her neighbors for calling her a witch. I guess since this instance was before the 1692 witch trials in Salem Village, maybe it wasn&amp;#039;t taken so seriously. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Why do you think Elizabeth Godman&amp;#039;s situation was different from the witch trials in Salem Village?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;--Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought the claims against Elizabeth Godman along with &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;the fact that she filed a lawsuit was interesting&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Many of the people claiming she was a witch seemed to think that their pigs or chickens died because of her; because she was a witch. I thought that was comical. I liked the fact that she was able to sue them too. The time of the trial was before the Salem Witch trials so maybe that is why the claims did not have enough justification. I am sure if they were made in 1692 she would have lost the case. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading the trial transcripts, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I was almost positive that an indiscretion had taken place between Elizabeth Godman and Mr. Bishop. It sounded like there might have been an affair, and in order to save himself from the wrath of his wife, he accused Godman of being a witch&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Of course, I&amp;#039;m sure that nobody had to twist Mrs. Bishop&amp;#039;s arm about accusing Godman of being a witch. I think there was definately some foul play and jealousy at hand. --[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 21:06, 16 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I was almost impressed with the fact that Elizabeth Godman was able to file a slander lawsuit against those who called her a witch. This seemed to be an almost rational thought in what was a sea of irrational behavior and unjust thinking. Of course  I don&amp;#039;t know how far her lawsuit actually got her. The inconsistencies and hypocrisies in all the trials is comical. The evidence used against her was so bizarre. You have to wonder if some of these people really did believe what they were saying or if they were making accusations out of spite or malice. They all seemed so prone to paranoia about anything that might deviate slightly from the religious norm.--Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Bridget Bishop convicted of witchcraft 1692; “Casco Girls” accuse George Burroughs, 1692 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The Salem witch trials I could not help but wonder where they came up with the ridiculous accusations, pigs dying after a visit from a women equaled her being a witch, did any of the citizens ever consider alternatives? I think the magistrate felt they were given a power and to secure general security they would convict a woman for looking at a child the wrong way or muttering a prayer seen as an incantation. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;In the case of Bridget Bishop, I did wonder did she wish to be seen as a witch?&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Or did all of the offenses against her make the claim of her being a witch come true? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that they really do jump to conclusions. It is like they think there could be no other possible reason why the pigs died. I think it goes back to what we talked about in class, that maybe the accusers were accusing people of witchcraft to show that they are holy. Because only the truly holy people could recognize evil? Religion is such a huge influence on the NE colonists. I think that cases like Bridget Bishop and George Burroughs show just how strong that influence was. --Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting in the trial of Bridget Bishop (as well as other witchcraft trials) one of the big arguments for her to be a witch was the illness and death of Children.  That&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; a witch is shown to be the very opposite of the proper woman (who gives birth to children) she therefore it connected with the deaths or illnesses of children.  She is the corrupted version of the perfect wife, mother, and woman inverting all morality and virtue.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  She is often also physically corrupted as in Bishops case upon examination they found a “preternatural teat” that ceased to exist but a few short hours later.  With Halloween coming upon us soon, it is interesting to think about how these trials may have affected our ideas of such a perverted creature and her connection to the inverted holiday. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker, wealthy Philadelphia woman, diary – 1758-1794 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker&amp;#039;s diary entries really reflect the discrepancies between the experiences of different colonial women, as a result of race, social and class status, geographic location,&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; etc. Elizabeth is described as a &amp;quot;wealthy Philadelphian&amp;quot;, and thus I think her accounts and experiences differ dramatically from those of other women- not just women living in different regions or areas (i.e., the Southern colonies), but also in her own town. For example, Karin Wulf describes the &amp;quot;Hucksters&amp;quot; in Philadelphia who were &amp;quot;at the lower end of the scale&amp;quot; (p.101) and would purchase second-hand or damaged goods and then re-sell them on the city streets as a way to earn money. Conversely, Elizabeth describes the work that others are doing for her: &amp;quot;Phebe Morris here this Afternoon fitting a Gown for me...&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;George Baker drove up Polly Campbell, whome I have hir&amp;#039;d this day to tind my little Henry...&amp;quot;. She also describes the frequent comings-and-goings of different maids in her service. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Her experiences are in stark contrast to the every-day experiences and lives of the female slaves on Landon Carter&amp;#039;s Virginia plantation,whom he refers to as &amp;quot;sordid creatures&amp;quot; (p.83).&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; Carter states, &amp;quot;I have ordered the wench to be tyed up and severely slashed to keep her care if possible; but I am afraid it will not be long enough remembered.&amp;quot; (p.83) From these excerpts, the reader can safely conclude that Elizabeth was leading a very different life than those of African American female slaves. -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Landon Carter complains about his female slaves (1771-1773) ==&lt;br /&gt;
You can read throughout his complaints, he sees himself to be superior to them, calling them &amp;quot;absurd&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;lazy and careless.&amp;quot;  As he complains about how someone must be there when they are cutting down the tobacco or they will do it wrong.  Is someone around to show his slaves how to properly do it or explain to them?  I&amp;#039;m sure the complaints of slaves being in pain are legitimate and Landon Carter is just not sympathetic to their aches and pains.  He disregards their complaints and treats them like work horses.  He says they need a &amp;quot;good whipping&amp;quot; and that will make the pain go away as it cured Mrs. Dairy Mary&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;invisible pain in her hip.&amp;quot;  Then eventually he admits that no matter what the punishment they still will not work well because they are &amp;quot;negros&amp;quot;.  I think that during that time that black slaves were looked at inferior to the white colonists but &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;what was the degree of treatment of slaves? Was Landon Carter&amp;#039;s assumption about black slaves generally agreed upon or was he the exception?  When I read George Washington Assigns Work to His Slaves, there wasn&amp;#039;t any comments about slaves being mistreated.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Landon Carter’s diary showed that he was frustrated with what he saw as the stupidity and laziness of his slaves. I think it is more likely that these slaves were engaged in a passive aggressive resistance to his authority. A slave woman such as Sicely, the cowkeeper, had very little control over her own life, but she could ruin her master’s day by allowing a cow to wander into a swamp.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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Landon Carter must have been extremely annoyed and fed up with his female slaves to record their laziness and his agitation in his journal so often. He mentioned the women being over dramatic, claiming they are sick but in actuality are not, and being bored with their work so mistakes are made.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; To me,he doesn&amp;#039;t seem like a &amp;quot;typical&amp;quot; southern slave owner. Most would force their slaves to do work and not except excuses for their laziness. He seemed to be giving up in his last entry claiming that he can&amp;#039;t do anything to train them to do their work.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Landon Carter is a whiner.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; He complains when his slaves make mistakes and whips them to help them remember to do their jobs right. I do not understand how he can think that will make them work harder. To me that would just make me angry and I would do worse then I did before. I guess maybe he tried to help Mary Mcginis daughter but that was not really help. When things do not get done it could be for another reason then they were lazy. He is so arrogant and feel superior to his slaves. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== George Washington&amp;#039;s slave list (1786) and slave work assignments (1786-88) ==&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I thought it was a bit odd the way some of the work assignments were referred to. The reference &amp;quot;all the plows...were plowing the Corn and the Hoes weeding it&amp;quot; seems like the people doing the work were just pieces of equipment.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; - Nancy Lee&lt;br /&gt;
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I found George Washington’s listing his slaves to be rather interesting. He seemed to be very much aware of all of them. He knew all of their names, though of course the majority had no surnames, and jobs. He also knew which children went with what parent, listed by their mother not father, and how old these children were. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;Were all slave owners so knowledgeable of their slaves? Or was this common practice, along the lines of knowing all the details of your property? It did seem like GW was simply cataloging his property more than anything, particularly when he listed some slaves as blind, lame, or old.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eulalia Perez Recalls her work in a mission in Spanish CA in early 19th Century (1877) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Why did Father Sanchez want Perez to marry Juan Marine after she past the age of child bearing (which I assume since she stated that all of her daughter&amp;#039;s were married)?  I suppose I just assumed that marriage was more important for the younger generation.  I&amp;#039;m sure Father Sanchez honestly thought it would better her life I just never thought of the idea of arranging marriages for older widows. - John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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== Karin Wulf, “Women’s Work in Colonial Philadelphia,” 2000 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Karin Wulf concludes her article by stating that &amp;quot;work&amp;quot;, especially for women of 18th Century Philadelphia and other urban cities, became &amp;quot;an important source of personal and community identity.&amp;quot; (p.103) She continues by arguing that many workers identified with their work, especially if it &amp;quot;enmeshed them in networks of obligation and association.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I am wondering if a colonial woman&amp;#039;s perception and close identification of her work as being related to her place in the larger community is resulting from a sense of wanting to feel &amp;quot;needed&amp;quot; by others, especially if the woman who was working (either outside or inside the home) was single or a widow&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;. Perhaps work offered such women a means of fulfillment- a way to feel that they had an obligation and responsibility to fulfill to the larger community. I&amp;#039;m not sure if I am making much sense. I guess I am thinking that upon the death of their husbands, or if they were single and did not have any children, working allowed such women to feel that they were &amp;quot;needed&amp;quot; (I can&amp;#039;t think of a better word)and could contribute to the community and society in their own way. &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think exploring the emotions and motivations of the women to take up work would be very interesting, though probably difficult to research.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; -Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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Karin Wulf describes how women made money despite the fact that they were not really  to work the men were. Retailing was huge for women in colonial times. Wulf says that women could have made up half of the retailing business and I find that interesting because there are still more women in retail then there are men. I like how she pointed out that even rich widows worked shopkeepers at high end stores. Women from all social classes made money. Most women needed income after they became widows because their husbands did not leave them their entire inheritance. Most of that would go to there sons. I like this article because we are not taught that much about how women made money in colonial times. -LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought this article on Women’s work in Colonial Philadelphia was very interesting as we often do not think of the roles women played being connected to independently generating money during this colonial period.  &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;I think the key phrase from this section is on page 98 where the author states that a problem with assuming women’s sole source of income was that it “casts women as only passive recipients of wealth, rather than generators of wealth.”  Indeed the author goes about disproving this idea showing how women were capable of generating their own income capable of sustaining them and their families upon the death of their husbands or if they chose never to marry.&amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;#039;  Work consisted of gender specific works, such as was connected with the family and home, and nongender specific works that could be picked up from the trade of husband or father. Whichever the case, this article shows women as being productive citizens, contributing to their own wealth as well as that of their community and doing so, it is an important contribution to the study of women in colonial America. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_3_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 3 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_3_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-09-10T06:02:09Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Abigail Bailey, 1815, Abominable Wickedness */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Overarching/comparative comments ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In the Nancy Woloch reading I found the use of the family to be very functional to the colonizers, and it changed greatly through time based off of necessity. This meant major changes in the placement of women in society. In 1672 family was a “fundamental economic unit” (25) and meant the health of the colony. Due to the focus on family harmony, women were able to remarry and create new homes that would be more beneficial to society. Furthermore, men often left their estates to their spouse. This meant that women had a certain amount of power. By 1712, the power of women was minimized and a hierarchy among the family unit arose where men were on top, then women, followed by male children and female children. At this time, women were supposed to be obedient to their husbands, and in return, the husbands would treat the women as a piece of themselves. Divorce was rare. By 1815, women had virtually no power. Divorce was almost non-existent and “married women had no independent legal existence, property rights, or control over their children”(42). Women’s roles changed quickly based off of what function the family needed to have at that particular time. It’s no wonder why so many women ran away. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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After spending some time last week learning about the lifestyles of the Native American women, through the lense of the somewhat bias English colonists, I found it interesting this week to see that as the settlers faced certain unfamiliar obstacles in their new surroundings, they adapted to many of the Native Americans&amp;#039; way of life. It almost seems like once they had to roll their sleeves up and actually make a living for themselves here, they realized that at times-- women must tend the field, people must marry several times, and community networks become the heart of the social structure, all of which had been elements of Native American life that the colonists had previously thought to be unnatural.--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 17:44, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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== Katherine Kish Sklar article, “To Use her as His Wife” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It is stated on page 80 that Martha Root pushed her claim against Elisha even though her actions incurred further risks to her reputation and hence to her future ability to marry. So why would she do this? Another question that came up in the reading was the issue of marriage. Would Martha have even wanted to marry Elisha after he ruined her reputation? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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It seemed that most of a woman&amp;#039;s support in a case of having a child out of wedlock came from the church, which i find surprising because of the &amp;quot;man being above the woman&amp;quot; idea that they followed. In the article wasn&amp;#039;t it the church that took the father of the child to court after Martha received a settlement? - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Benjamin Wadsworth, 1712 – Well-Ordered Family ==&lt;br /&gt;
Wadsworth begins by talking about how a husband and a wife are supposed to love each other, take care of each other when they are sick..etc. I was surprised when I first read this because it seemed almost like an equal relationship. Of course, then I read the part about the husband being the wife&amp;#039;s head and that he is meant to govern over her. Wadsworth says that the &amp;quot;husband&amp;#039;s government ought to be gentle and easy, and the wife&amp;#039;s obedience ready and cheerful&amp;quot;. I think Wadsworth&amp;#039;s choice of words is important. He makes it sound that like the husbands gently guide the wives along and that the wives are happy to be told what to do. The influence of religion on married life is very evident. Quarelling is &amp;quot;the Devil&amp;#039;s work&amp;quot; and it dishonors God. Today, it&amp;#039;s pretty clear that every married couple argues sometimes and that doesn&amp;#039;t mean you are doing the &amp;quot;devil&amp;#039;s work&amp;quot;. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Katelyn. When I first read this, it seemed as if he were counting men and women to be (almost) the same, then he pulls the whole, &amp;quot;man is the woman&amp;#039;s head&amp;quot; thing. The quote that really caught my eye was when he was talking to women and said, &amp;quot;God has made him (husband), your head, and set him above you, and made it your duty to love and revere him.&amp;quot; So, there is a STRONG implication that men ruling women is a religious decree and anyone who were to break that would then be unholy.-Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with both of the comments made by Katelyn and Kristina, the article by Wadsworth really struck me. The quote on page 27 stuck out &amp;quot;[f]amily, whatever its liabilities, remained the most important social institution...&amp;quot; Women could not do anything outside of the family, were required to fall back on it, and let her husband have complete rule over her and if he died before her, the eldest son took over the estate. It was a never-ending cycle once a woman was married that she was never to have control over her mind/body/land/or any other asset. Religion was a much stronger contributing factor in those days, but did God really approve of a women becoming completely inferior to her husband? I do not think that is written in the Bible, so did colonists relate problems back to Adam and Eve instead? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with the previous comments made about the Husbands and Wives Article written by Benjamin Wadsworth. At the very beginning it seems that  men and women are equal by saying that there love is mutual and it should be performed by each and overall that they both needed to work together in order to have a good family. Then Wadsworth’s views turn completely around by saying “the husband is called the head of the woman” and that they ought to be under their husband’s government. Did all Puritan men around this time feel the same way as Wadsworth?   Nick  J&lt;br /&gt;
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Benjamin Wadsworth’s description of marriage seemed ironic. Marriage was meant to involve mutual affection, yet the husband was always in charge of the wife and the wife was always supposed to be obedient to the husband. I thought the end of Wadsworth’s account was funny because he reminded women that although they really may be superior to their husbands in intelligence, wealth, and class, God still intended them to be ruled by these stupid, poor, common men. That made me wonder if Puritans considered gender roles more binding than social class. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison about how ironic his description of marriage was. He says &amp;quot;It is their duty to dwell together with one another.&amp;quot; (P. 28) The ironic thing was that he says how men and women should &amp;quot;dwell&amp;quot; together, which implies equality, yet he says the woman must submit to the husband and obey him. Another interesting thing I found was that Wadsworth says &amp;quot;Though he governs her he must not treat her as a servant, but as his own flesh; he must love her as himself.&amp;quot; (P. 29) Wadsworth contradicts himself because he makes references such as the &amp;quot;husband&amp;#039;s government&amp;quot; yet calls for men to see their wives as equals. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susanna Wesley, 1732, Evangelical Child-Rearing ==&lt;br /&gt;
The letter from Susanna Wesley was by far the most impressionable reading, to me, this week. The best way for me to put it is that it really freaked me out. I suppose it is because her methods of child-rearing were a bit alien to the methods of the typical American family today. Yet, I actually found it interesting that I did see some similarities :(on the bottom of page 32) she talks about rewarding children for doing good things, which I think is a relatively good policy. Throughout the reading I felt like she was talking about some well trained dogs that she had, not her children. It was literally as if she were training pets. A particular sentence caught my eye, on page 32, where she said &amp;quot;That civil behavior which made them admired when they were at home by all who saw them was in a great measure lost,...&amp;quot; I can just imagine her friends coming over for lunch one day and commenting on how well trained her children are. Now, I am all for well behaved children, but the methods by which she makes them so well behaved seems a little too excessive. They are not allowed to be kids. They are adults by the time they are old enough to walk. Was this a typical religious family upbringing in the 1700&amp;#039;s?-Kristina .S.&lt;br /&gt;
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Susanna Wesley has some pretty interesting instructions of how to raise children. I know that the Puritans thought that children were born evil and needed to be taught right and wrong but I think her methods were rather excessive. Before a child is one year old they were taught to &amp;quot;fear the rod&amp;quot;. We would call beating children child abuse. I did not like her strict routine and none of us would ever survive if we had to live in that time now. The only part I liked about her essay was how she thought girls should be able to read above all other things. I think that is very important for girls especially in a time period where many could not read. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what LeAnn mentioned above- I did think it was interesting that Susanna thought that young girls should be taught to read before they learn skills such as sewing, etc. By placing an emphasis on education, I think she also might be reflecting some of the beliefs of the Puritan society in general. However, I am not sure if the Puritan emphasis on education and self-improvement applied just to males or to women and young girls, as well? Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s statement, certainly, makes it seem as if this belief and value was extended to women, as well- but I am not sure if the Wesley family was an exception or reflective of the greater society as a whole. I also wonder about the role of region in influencing educational practices- did the southern colonies place such an emphasis on educating males (and perhaps females, as well), or was their focus more on commercial production, etc.? I think Susanna&amp;#039;s statement brings up questions not only of gender roles and expectations but also the influence of geography and location. - Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing to keep in mind is that Susanna Wesley rules may not have reflected that of the majority of people living in England at the time. The reading says that she is from a place called Lincolnshire, from which many Puritans migrated. I think that her &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; made sense for her particular lifestyle, but I also think that some of the ideas that Wesley, and the Puritans were indoctoring into their children may not have been condusive to the mission of colonization. After all, at a time when people are trying to settle a new area, and are faced with unfamiliar lands, it seems that for practical purposes they should have encouraged free thinking, imagination, and ingenuity from their youth. --[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 17:55, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I’m not surprised that this document is one of the ones most commented on because it did leave a very strong impression on the reader. In a time where there have been countless debates over spanking children as punishment, the idea of a parent using a rod to frighten a child barely one year old so that they cry softly seems absurd. &lt;br /&gt;
Another thing I found rather odd in the letter was on page 31 “nor were they ever permitted to call each other by their proper names without the addition of brother or sister.” Nowadays I don’t know anyone who calls their sibling “brother” or “brother Jacob” (unless you count Buster in the tv series Arrested Development). The relationship between siblings today is a rather casual one, usually including nicknames for each other not calling each other by their family relationship. The addition of the title “brother” or “Sister” to one’s name brought about the image of a monastery or an Abbey in my mind. --Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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I found reading Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s letter to be very enlightening. Many people see women being at home as a simple task and not very important, yet Wesley contradicts that view. She explains all the different methods that are used for raising a child throughout their young years and I realized that a great amount of work and time was placed into this. What I found especially interesting was how important it was for girls to be taught to read. We always talk about how women did not learn to read or write during this time,  yet Wesley says &amp;quot;That no girl be taught to work till she can read very well.&amp;quot; (Page 33) The way she stressed the importance of reading for girls struck me as odd and enlightening, and glad that she understood the importance of educating women, rather than just confining them to household duties as they were accustomed to. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eliza Pinckney, 1750s, To Improve in Every Virtue ==&lt;br /&gt;
Eliza Pinckney&amp;#039;s list of resolutions explains a lot about all of the roles that women were expected to fill in early America. Her first few resolutions are religious. She wanted to be a better Christian and to trust in God. Some of her other resolutions seem similar to many common resolutions today. When she says she wants &amp;quot;to be decent but frugal in my own expences&amp;quot;, she sounds like many women who vow to stop spending so much money on themselves. She also vows to be a better wife, mother, daughter, and friend. These resolutions are probably the New Year&amp;#039;s resolutions of women today. I think it was important to read the piece by Pinckney. It shows all of the different roles that women are expected to fill, many of which are still relevant today.- Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the document by Eliza Pinckney. It showcased one woman&amp;#039;s focus in her life during the eighteenth-century. Along with other women of the time who lived in the colonies, Pinckney devoted most of her time and attention to her family. Each year she addressed the fact that her husband, children, and relatives were very important to her and wanted to do and be everything she could for them. Today, women and men alike, make resolutions to become a better wife, mother, father, or brother. I thought it was interesting that Pinckney&amp;#039;s actions paralleled those that can be seen today in the twenty first century. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading Eliza Pinckney&amp;#039;s document. Not only did she illustrate common colonial gender roles regarding family and religious piety, but she also seemed to have a genuinely good heart. It was somewhat surprising to read her resolutions regarding slaves. She talks about being a &amp;quot;Good Mistress&amp;quot; and wishes not to be &amp;quot;tyrannical&amp;quot; over them. This is not the image of slave ownership that many white males seem to paint in their documents. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Esther Burr, 1756-57, Tied hand and foot ==&lt;br /&gt;
In Esther Burr&amp;#039;s journal you can see the basis she has in Puritan traditions.  She relies on her faith, family, and her social network of friends.  She refers to doing a lot of spinning, taking care of her children and awaiting her husband arrival from trips.  She implicates in her letter to her friend that she must marry and not wait so long to do so.  Also, at the same time she&amp;#039;s not afraid to share her opinion, not that she does it that often.  She even astonishes herself when she makes a comment about what Mr. Ewing says about women and friendships.  She was not afraid to hold her tongue &amp;quot;I talked him quite silent.&amp;quot;  The men around her were either appalled by her comments or surprised that she had an opinion on the idea of women not being capable of having friendships.  The perception that men had of women was very different then.  I think there were women in society (especially those from the elite) that were very intellectual.  Were they afraid to show their intellectual abilities in public around males in society?  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that is a really good question- perhaps women of colonial America were afraid to appear &amp;quot;superior&amp;quot; in some ways to some men, or that they were worried they would be judged critically for stepping outside of traditional gender roles and boundaries. I think a lot of men in the colonial period might have taken women for granted, in a way, and assumed certain gender roles and behavior as &amp;quot;fact&amp;quot;, rather than allowing for interpretation or allowing each individual women to define who she was for herself. I think many males may have seen colonial women as a large, homogenous group with similar qualities (often dictated, perhaps, by the males themselves or by societal customs)rather than as individual people with distinct and different character traits and aspirations. - Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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We talked about the people of the Chesapeake forming networks of mutual aid beyond family because extended kin was very rare. In New England, families have more strength, but there are still societal similarities to the Chesapeake. New England colonists had extended networks, particularly expressed through friendships, as seen with Esther Burr and her friend Sally Prince. Gossip certainly had a powerful role in maintaining or ruining reputations, with the extreme being represented in the Salem Witch Trials. And of course, these friendships and close knit community resulted in meddling. Esther seemed very much interested in her friend’s personal life, and apparently Mr. Burr had a great love for matchmaking (which is stereotypically regarded as a feminine trait, making for entertaining reading). However, Sally seemingly had a certain measure of control in being able to avoid the man courting her, though societal norms, represented in this case by Ester and her reprimands, were pushing her towards marriage. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed the letters by Esther Burr they provided a lot more insight into the daily wives of women at the time. Though I do wonder why it was necessary to write to her friend about how April 6-9 was “all devoted to spinning folks.” The most interesting section to me was April 13, 1756 when she writes “How shall I get along when I have got ½ dzn. Or 10 Children I cant devise.” We’ve seen graphs and statistics of the demographics of the time period but just to see a woman write nonchalantly about having 6-10 children, as if it really was no big deal, stuck out at me. However, I suppose this is because of the differences between now and then. --Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Abigail Bailey, 1815, Abominable Wickedness ==&lt;br /&gt;
Abigail Bailey&amp;#039;s memoir was very interesting to read.  Laws intended for men and women did not always protect women.  Probably not in this case either.  Abigail admits her loyalties to her husband but when she realizes her husband is having an incestuous realtionship with their daughter she is unable to ignore it.  She confronts him and threatens to take him to justice.  She justifies her actions by saying to him that she is &amp;quot;acting on principle and with mature consideration.&amp;quot;  She knew that if her daughter did not testify against her father that it would be very hard to prove what he had done.  She probably felt that one would believe her.  Afterall, Abigail was a woman and women should not speak out against their husbands.  The value of a man&amp;#039;s word over a womans was not the same then.  Instead of putting her daughter through the ridicule of the community she confronts her husband.  She threatens to use the process of the law to scare him.  She believes that the legal system will not uphold the law for her.  Abigail uses the one power she does have over her husband - she refuses to be intimate with him.  &lt;br /&gt;
-Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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Abigale Bailey&amp;#039;s piece was quite disturbing. I felt that after reading about so much virtue in Eliza Pincknery&amp;#039;s piece and the Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s letter&amp;#039;s concerning religious practices and child-rearing, this piece was juxtaposed to the previous documents. It is not shocking that a man, a father in 1815 could virtually get away with molestation and incest, especially since as Mr. B noted, that Abigale was &amp;quot;under his legal control&amp;quot;. It just illustrates the hard lines drawn between the genders and how women, who seemed to have at least a modicum of control in the child rearing and household affairs actually had no say at all. I felt proud of Abigale to vocalize her fears and suspicions at the cost of her reputation and, as she felt her safety. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought An abominable wickedness written by Abigail Bailey was very fascinating. An abominable wickedness was about Abigial Bailey finding out that husband had slept with one of their children. First off that is really sick to think that the father would sleep with one of their own children. In early 19th century America there was little that Abigail Bailey could do about this horrible situation.  She did not have prove that her husband was having a relationship with one of their daughters and also she could not get her daughter to testify against him. Also even if she did have information against her husband the Massachusetts Court would have sided with the men and not the women. Her memoir also discusses that when marriages failed it was exceptionally hard on women.  Couples would try to reconcile their differences but if they couldn’t they would need to separate.  Why was it extremely hard for women to obtain divorces? Nick Jesionka&lt;br /&gt;
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I was mortified by women’s inability to protect their own children from the authority of their husbands. Abigail Bailey rightly suspected misbehavior on the part of her husband but she could not even share her fears with anyone. However, eventually Abigail Bailey reminded her husband that a marriage was supposed to be mutually beneficial.  Although she was under his complete authority, he promised her fidelity and protection. You could almost detect the triumph in her tone when she asserted that she was seeking a separation because he did not hold up his end of the bargain. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that this document about Abigail Bailey and her husband’s incestuous obsession with their daughter is very disturbing. The status of the “feme covert” along with a general issue of family virtue kept both mother and daughter from successfully stopping the husband’s / father’s infidelity except for through the help of male relatives. This shows that women were doubly controlled (perhaps in equal efficacy) in their actions not only through legal rights but also morality and their ability to uphold family honor facing civic supervision and judgment. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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This article definitely differed from Esther Burrs diary where she councils her friend on having a happy marriage and being a dutiful servant of God. Esther seems genuinely happy in her marriage and lot in life. I wonder which was closer to the norm in colonial society a situation like hers or a situation like that of Abigails. I was horrified by the authors summary of the story where he noted that Abigail&amp;#039;s husband took her on a trip to New York and deserted her there! Obviously he was an all around upstanding husband and father. The story is constantly reiterating the dominance that Mr. B had over both her and her children. WIves and children were taught to obey and honor their parents. The only ammunition that Mrs B seemed to have was that her husband had not upheld his half of the marriage. It is understandable why she apparently did not seek legal action right away. Id imagine that if it came down to her word against his the court would side with the husband. Her husband also sounded like a tyrant so she was probably afraid of the repercussions for herself and her children if she made an unsuccessful attempt at getting him arrested.-Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== New Spain’s (New Mexico’s) moral code as dictated by the Spanish Crown in 1752 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Laws on Slave Descent in VA and MD, 1662, 1664, 1691, 1692 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I am completely shocked by some of these laws. Basically, if I understood the readings correctly, freewomen who had children with slaves, could then be subject to slavery herself. Is that right? I found it particularly disturbing that under the Virginia, 1691 law, if a woman has a bastard, half negro child, then she owes the church to which she belongs a fine of 15 pounds. Also, she has to serve time as a slave at the discretion of the church, and her child is at the discretion/mercy of the church as well. I thought this was completely illogical, unethical, and against everything moral that I know in life. I think that once again, these laws are a reflection of the FEAR that white men have, of women and people of different ethnicities than their own. How lame!--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 18:47, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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This article which addresses Virginia and Maryland laws on the status of interracial liaisons and resulting children was very specific in stating the differences held for men and women and the legal status of the children.  It was stated in the beginning that these laws were to discourage and prevent interracial relations but they also show the real concerns addressing issues of ambiguity on the legal status of the children and sexual partners as well as controlling social morality. I am especially interested in the reasons for these laws concerning white women and their children with male slaves. How necessary was the need for these preventative laws? Were there many cases in which these laws were actually enforced? When did this really become an issue?-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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I was shocked with the extremity of the laws that were in place in regards to relations between white colonists and slaves. Children of mixed decent seemed to have almost as poor a lot in life as slave children, since they were bound to servitude for up to thirty years in Virginia. I was surprised that the penalties for men and women were so strict, I wonder if this is a reflection on the emphasis and influence of church and religion in the lives of the colonists. Obviously it must have been considered a sin and one of serious moral repercussions. What would be the penalty for any of the slaves in question? Since they were already bound in servitude was a punishment considered unnecessary? I also found myself wondering if this was a common occurrence at the time.---Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Skilled slaves in Maryland, 1748-1763, Maryland Gazette ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Complaint of Elizabeth Sprigs, indentured servant, 1756 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Elizabeth&amp;#039;s Sprigs complaint to her father is pretty sad. I am not sure if all she says is true. She might be exaggerating bu then again maybe she is not. I really wish we knew what she did to get her father to throw her on a ship where she was indentured. I felt terrible for her as she asks for clothes and not something else she may have wanted. The short but vivid description really worked and if i were her father I would send her the clothes if not paying out so she would not be indentured. I never really thought about being indentured could be as bad as being a slave. -LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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The reading that stuck out to me the most was the Sprigs reading. Here we have a girl in Maryland writing a letter to her father in England asking for aid. Why is she doing this? Because he sent her away as an indentured servant as a punishment for bad conduct and disobedience! Huh. Um, I’m thinking this is maybe a bit of an overreaction on daddy’s part. Still, if that’s not an incentive to be well behaved I don’t know what is. Is this the 17th century equivalent of taking your kid into a jail cell to scare them straight? Whether or not Elizabeth is exaggerating her condition (which Wolach suggests she is not) is less important than the very fact that her father could make her an indentured servant in the first place. As his daughter, she’s essentially his property, and he has the power to sell her, rent her off, whatever. What happened if she survived her indenture? Was she free and left in the colonies or was she sent back to her father? How often did this happen to other girls? Would her father have sent a son away for misbehaving? And what &amp;#039;&amp;#039;exactly&amp;#039;&amp;#039; did she do to make him react like this? --Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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== Apprenticeship in PA, 1771-1773, Record of Indentures ==&lt;br /&gt;
The list of indentures of 1771-1773 was interesting to read. The document mentioned that women apprenticeship was different than that of young men, which was unsurprising. Most of the work and skills learned by the females was housewifery, to read the bible, or write legibly. The entries listed were of women whose terms were anywhere between three to fourteen years. I thought that was a very long time. One example is of a woman named Abigail Adams, whose term was 14 years and one month, was taught to read the bible, write legibly, learn multiplication, and houswifery. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== Advertisements, Gazettes of VA, PA, SC, NY – 1751-1776 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I was surprised that there were so many advertisements for schools for young women. I found the ad for Mrs. Duneau&amp;#039;s boarding school in South Carolina very interesting. Most of the other ads mentioned teaching needlework to the young ladies, but that was one of the only subjects that was taught. However, Mrs. Duneau&amp;#039;s school taught French, English, math, geography, writing, and of course, needlework. I was also surprised that many of the school&amp;#039;s included gentlemen and young women in their ads. This is probably because many of the schools were opened and operated by women. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the advertisements pretty interesting. I am from Williamsburg so had seen some advertisements for schools for young women before; learning to sew, how to become a proper lady, housewifery, etc, but never had seen one for a young man. I knew they had apprenticeships but did not know they attended schools like women did. I also found interesting how different the ad for a school was compared to that of finding a slave, both adverstisements are looking for people and how women were referred to in a slave ad compared to wanting a young woman, &amp;quot;proper young lady&amp;quot; for a school. -Megan W.&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

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		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_3_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 3 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
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				<updated>2009-09-10T05:43:10Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Laws on Slave Descent in VA and MD, 1662, 1664, 1691, 1692 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Overarching/comparative comments ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In the Nancy Woloch reading I found the use of the family to be very functional to the colonizers, and it changed greatly through time based off of necessity. This meant major changes in the placement of women in society. In 1672 family was a “fundamental economic unit” (25) and meant the health of the colony. Due to the focus on family harmony, women were able to remarry and create new homes that would be more beneficial to society. Furthermore, men often left their estates to their spouse. This meant that women had a certain amount of power. By 1712, the power of women was minimized and a hierarchy among the family unit arose where men were on top, then women, followed by male children and female children. At this time, women were supposed to be obedient to their husbands, and in return, the husbands would treat the women as a piece of themselves. Divorce was rare. By 1815, women had virtually no power. Divorce was almost non-existent and “married women had no independent legal existence, property rights, or control over their children”(42). Women’s roles changed quickly based off of what function the family needed to have at that particular time. It’s no wonder why so many women ran away. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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After spending some time last week learning about the lifestyles of the Native American women, through the lense of the somewhat bias English colonists, I found it interesting this week to see that as the settlers faced certain unfamiliar obstacles in their new surroundings, they adapted to many of the Native Americans&amp;#039; way of life. It almost seems like once they had to roll their sleeves up and actually make a living for themselves here, they realized that at times-- women must tend the field, people must marry several times, and community networks become the heart of the social structure, all of which had been elements of Native American life that the colonists had previously thought to be unnatural.--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 17:44, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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== Katherine Kish Sklar article, “To Use her as His Wife” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It is stated on page 80 that Martha Root pushed her claim against Elisha even though her actions incurred further risks to her reputation and hence to her future ability to marry. So why would she do this? Another question that came up in the reading was the issue of marriage. Would Martha have even wanted to marry Elisha after he ruined her reputation? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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It seemed that most of a woman&amp;#039;s support in a case of having a child out of wedlock came from the church, which i find surprising because of the &amp;quot;man being above the woman&amp;quot; idea that they followed. In the article wasn&amp;#039;t it the church that took the father of the child to court after Martha received a settlement? - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Benjamin Wadsworth, 1712 – Well-Ordered Family ==&lt;br /&gt;
Wadsworth begins by talking about how a husband and a wife are supposed to love each other, take care of each other when they are sick..etc. I was surprised when I first read this because it seemed almost like an equal relationship. Of course, then I read the part about the husband being the wife&amp;#039;s head and that he is meant to govern over her. Wadsworth says that the &amp;quot;husband&amp;#039;s government ought to be gentle and easy, and the wife&amp;#039;s obedience ready and cheerful&amp;quot;. I think Wadsworth&amp;#039;s choice of words is important. He makes it sound that like the husbands gently guide the wives along and that the wives are happy to be told what to do. The influence of religion on married life is very evident. Quarelling is &amp;quot;the Devil&amp;#039;s work&amp;quot; and it dishonors God. Today, it&amp;#039;s pretty clear that every married couple argues sometimes and that doesn&amp;#039;t mean you are doing the &amp;quot;devil&amp;#039;s work&amp;quot;. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Katelyn. When I first read this, it seemed as if he were counting men and women to be (almost) the same, then he pulls the whole, &amp;quot;man is the woman&amp;#039;s head&amp;quot; thing. The quote that really caught my eye was when he was talking to women and said, &amp;quot;God has made him (husband), your head, and set him above you, and made it your duty to love and revere him.&amp;quot; So, there is a STRONG implication that men ruling women is a religious decree and anyone who were to break that would then be unholy.-Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with both of the comments made by Katelyn and Kristina, the article by Wadsworth really struck me. The quote on page 27 stuck out &amp;quot;[f]amily, whatever its liabilities, remained the most important social institution...&amp;quot; Women could not do anything outside of the family, were required to fall back on it, and let her husband have complete rule over her and if he died before her, the eldest son took over the estate. It was a never-ending cycle once a woman was married that she was never to have control over her mind/body/land/or any other asset. Religion was a much stronger contributing factor in those days, but did God really approve of a women becoming completely inferior to her husband? I do not think that is written in the Bible, so did colonists relate problems back to Adam and Eve instead? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with the previous comments made about the Husbands and Wives Article written by Benjamin Wadsworth. At the very beginning it seems that  men and women are equal by saying that there love is mutual and it should be performed by each and overall that they both needed to work together in order to have a good family. Then Wadsworth’s views turn completely around by saying “the husband is called the head of the woman” and that they ought to be under their husband’s government. Did all Puritan men around this time feel the same way as Wadsworth?   Nick  J&lt;br /&gt;
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Benjamin Wadsworth’s description of marriage seemed ironic. Marriage was meant to involve mutual affection, yet the husband was always in charge of the wife and the wife was always supposed to be obedient to the husband. I thought the end of Wadsworth’s account was funny because he reminded women that although they really may be superior to their husbands in intelligence, wealth, and class, God still intended them to be ruled by these stupid, poor, common men. That made me wonder if Puritans considered gender roles more binding than social class. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison about how ironic his description of marriage was. He says &amp;quot;It is their duty to dwell together with one another.&amp;quot; (P. 28) The ironic thing was that he says how men and women should &amp;quot;dwell&amp;quot; together, which implies equality, yet he says the woman must submit to the husband and obey him. Another interesting thing I found was that Wadsworth says &amp;quot;Though he governs her he must not treat her as a servant, but as his own flesh; he must love her as himself.&amp;quot; (P. 29) Wadsworth contradicts himself because he makes references such as the &amp;quot;husband&amp;#039;s government&amp;quot; yet calls for men to see their wives as equals. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susanna Wesley, 1732, Evangelical Child-Rearing ==&lt;br /&gt;
The letter from Susanna Wesley was by far the most impressionable reading, to me, this week. The best way for me to put it is that it really freaked me out. I suppose it is because her methods of child-rearing were a bit alien to the methods of the typical American family today. Yet, I actually found it interesting that I did see some similarities :(on the bottom of page 32) she talks about rewarding children for doing good things, which I think is a relatively good policy. Throughout the reading I felt like she was talking about some well trained dogs that she had, not her children. It was literally as if she were training pets. A particular sentence caught my eye, on page 32, where she said &amp;quot;That civil behavior which made them admired when they were at home by all who saw them was in a great measure lost,...&amp;quot; I can just imagine her friends coming over for lunch one day and commenting on how well trained her children are. Now, I am all for well behaved children, but the methods by which she makes them so well behaved seems a little too excessive. They are not allowed to be kids. They are adults by the time they are old enough to walk. Was this a typical religious family upbringing in the 1700&amp;#039;s?-Kristina .S.&lt;br /&gt;
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Susanna Wesley has some pretty interesting instructions of how to raise children. I know that the Puritans thought that children were born evil and needed to be taught right and wrong but I think her methods were rather excessive. Before a child is one year old they were taught to &amp;quot;fear the rod&amp;quot;. We would call beating children child abuse. I did not like her strict routine and none of us would ever survive if we had to live in that time now. The only part I liked about her essay was how she thought girls should be able to read above all other things. I think that is very important for girls especially in a time period where many could not read. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what LeAnn mentioned above- I did think it was interesting that Susanna thought that young girls should be taught to read before they learn skills such as sewing, etc. By placing an emphasis on education, I think she also might be reflecting some of the beliefs of the Puritan society in general. However, I am not sure if the Puritan emphasis on education and self-improvement applied just to males or to women and young girls, as well? Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s statement, certainly, makes it seem as if this belief and value was extended to women, as well- but I am not sure if the Wesley family was an exception or reflective of the greater society as a whole. I also wonder about the role of region in influencing educational practices- did the southern colonies place such an emphasis on educating males (and perhaps females, as well), or was their focus more on commercial production, etc.? I think Susanna&amp;#039;s statement brings up questions not only of gender roles and expectations but also the influence of geography and location. - Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing to keep in mind is that Susanna Wesley rules may not have reflected that of the majority of people living in England at the time. The reading says that she is from a place called Lincolnshire, from which many Puritans migrated. I think that her &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; made sense for her particular lifestyle, but I also think that some of the ideas that Wesley, and the Puritans were indoctoring into their children may not have been condusive to the mission of colonization. After all, at a time when people are trying to settle a new area, and are faced with unfamiliar lands, it seems that for practical purposes they should have encouraged free thinking, imagination, and ingenuity from their youth. --[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 17:55, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I’m not surprised that this document is one of the ones most commented on because it did leave a very strong impression on the reader. In a time where there have been countless debates over spanking children as punishment, the idea of a parent using a rod to frighten a child barely one year old so that they cry softly seems absurd. &lt;br /&gt;
Another thing I found rather odd in the letter was on page 31 “nor were they ever permitted to call each other by their proper names without the addition of brother or sister.” Nowadays I don’t know anyone who calls their sibling “brother” or “brother Jacob” (unless you count Buster in the tv series Arrested Development). The relationship between siblings today is a rather casual one, usually including nicknames for each other not calling each other by their family relationship. The addition of the title “brother” or “Sister” to one’s name brought about the image of a monastery or an Abbey in my mind. --Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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I found reading Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s letter to be very enlightening. Many people see women being at home as a simple task and not very important, yet Wesley contradicts that view. She explains all the different methods that are used for raising a child throughout their young years and I realized that a great amount of work and time was placed into this. What I found especially interesting was how important it was for girls to be taught to read. We always talk about how women did not learn to read or write during this time,  yet Wesley says &amp;quot;That no girl be taught to work till she can read very well.&amp;quot; (Page 33) The way she stressed the importance of reading for girls struck me as odd and enlightening, and glad that she understood the importance of educating women, rather than just confining them to household duties as they were accustomed to. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eliza Pinckney, 1750s, To Improve in Every Virtue ==&lt;br /&gt;
Eliza Pinckney&amp;#039;s list of resolutions explains a lot about all of the roles that women were expected to fill in early America. Her first few resolutions are religious. She wanted to be a better Christian and to trust in God. Some of her other resolutions seem similar to many common resolutions today. When she says she wants &amp;quot;to be decent but frugal in my own expences&amp;quot;, she sounds like many women who vow to stop spending so much money on themselves. She also vows to be a better wife, mother, daughter, and friend. These resolutions are probably the New Year&amp;#039;s resolutions of women today. I think it was important to read the piece by Pinckney. It shows all of the different roles that women are expected to fill, many of which are still relevant today.- Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the document by Eliza Pinckney. It showcased one woman&amp;#039;s focus in her life during the eighteenth-century. Along with other women of the time who lived in the colonies, Pinckney devoted most of her time and attention to her family. Each year she addressed the fact that her husband, children, and relatives were very important to her and wanted to do and be everything she could for them. Today, women and men alike, make resolutions to become a better wife, mother, father, or brother. I thought it was interesting that Pinckney&amp;#039;s actions paralleled those that can be seen today in the twenty first century. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading Eliza Pinckney&amp;#039;s document. Not only did she illustrate common colonial gender roles regarding family and religious piety, but she also seemed to have a genuinely good heart. It was somewhat surprising to read her resolutions regarding slaves. She talks about being a &amp;quot;Good Mistress&amp;quot; and wishes not to be &amp;quot;tyrannical&amp;quot; over them. This is not the image of slave ownership that many white males seem to paint in their documents. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Esther Burr, 1756-57, Tied hand and foot ==&lt;br /&gt;
In Esther Burr&amp;#039;s journal you can see the basis she has in Puritan traditions.  She relies on her faith, family, and her social network of friends.  She refers to doing a lot of spinning, taking care of her children and awaiting her husband arrival from trips.  She implicates in her letter to her friend that she must marry and not wait so long to do so.  Also, at the same time she&amp;#039;s not afraid to share her opinion, not that she does it that often.  She even astonishes herself when she makes a comment about what Mr. Ewing says about women and friendships.  She was not afraid to hold her tongue &amp;quot;I talked him quite silent.&amp;quot;  The men around her were either appalled by her comments or surprised that she had an opinion on the idea of women not being capable of having friendships.  The perception that men had of women was very different then.  I think there were women in society (especially those from the elite) that were very intellectual.  Were they afraid to show their intellectual abilities in public around males in society?  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that is a really good question- perhaps women of colonial America were afraid to appear &amp;quot;superior&amp;quot; in some ways to some men, or that they were worried they would be judged critically for stepping outside of traditional gender roles and boundaries. I think a lot of men in the colonial period might have taken women for granted, in a way, and assumed certain gender roles and behavior as &amp;quot;fact&amp;quot;, rather than allowing for interpretation or allowing each individual women to define who she was for herself. I think many males may have seen colonial women as a large, homogenous group with similar qualities (often dictated, perhaps, by the males themselves or by societal customs)rather than as individual people with distinct and different character traits and aspirations. - Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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We talked about the people of the Chesapeake forming networks of mutual aid beyond family because extended kin was very rare. In New England, families have more strength, but there are still societal similarities to the Chesapeake. New England colonists had extended networks, particularly expressed through friendships, as seen with Esther Burr and her friend Sally Prince. Gossip certainly had a powerful role in maintaining or ruining reputations, with the extreme being represented in the Salem Witch Trials. And of course, these friendships and close knit community resulted in meddling. Esther seemed very much interested in her friend’s personal life, and apparently Mr. Burr had a great love for matchmaking (which is stereotypically regarded as a feminine trait, making for entertaining reading). However, Sally seemingly had a certain measure of control in being able to avoid the man courting her, though societal norms, represented in this case by Ester and her reprimands, were pushing her towards marriage. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed the letters by Esther Burr they provided a lot more insight into the daily wives of women at the time. Though I do wonder why it was necessary to write to her friend about how April 6-9 was “all devoted to spinning folks.” The most interesting section to me was April 13, 1756 when she writes “How shall I get along when I have got ½ dzn. Or 10 Children I cant devise.” We’ve seen graphs and statistics of the demographics of the time period but just to see a woman write nonchalantly about having 6-10 children, as if it really was no big deal, stuck out at me. However, I suppose this is because of the differences between now and then. --Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Abigail Bailey, 1815, Abominable Wickedness ==&lt;br /&gt;
Abigail Bailey&amp;#039;s memoir was very interesting to read.  Laws intended for men and women did not always protect women.  Probably not in this case either.  Abigail admits her loyalties to her husband but when she realizes her husband is having an incestuous realtionship with their daughter she is unable to ignore it.  She confronts him and threatens to take him to justice.  She justifies her actions by saying to him that she is &amp;quot;acting on principle and with mature consideration.&amp;quot;  She knew that if her daughter did not testify against her father that it would be very hard to prove what he had done.  She probably felt that one would believe her.  Afterall, Abigail was a woman and women should not speak out against their husbands.  The value of a man&amp;#039;s word over a womans was not the same then.  Instead of putting her daughter through the ridicule of the community she confronts her husband.  She threatens to use the process of the law to scare him.  She believes that the legal system will not uphold the law for her.  Abigail uses the one power she does have over her husband - she refuses to be intimate with him.  &lt;br /&gt;
-Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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Abigale Bailey&amp;#039;s piece was quite disturbing. I felt that after reading about so much virtue in Eliza Pincknery&amp;#039;s piece and the Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s letter&amp;#039;s concerning religious practices and child-rearing, this piece was juxtaposed to the previous documents. It is not shocking that a man, a father in 1815 could virtually get away with molestation and incest, especially since as Mr. B noted, that Abigale was &amp;quot;under his legal control&amp;quot;. It just illustrates the hard lines drawn between the genders and how women, who seemed to have at least a modicum of control in the child rearing and household affairs actually had no say at all. I felt proud of Abigale to vocalize her fears and suspicions at the cost of her reputation and, as she felt her safety. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought An abominable wickedness written by Abigail Bailey was very fascinating. An abominable wickedness was about Abigial Bailey finding out that husband had slept with one of their children. First off that is really sick to think that the father would sleep with one of their own children. In early 19th century America there was little that Abigail Bailey could do about this horrible situation.  She did not have prove that her husband was having a relationship with one of their daughters and also she could not get her daughter to testify against him. Also even if she did have information against her husband the Massachusetts Court would have sided with the men and not the women. Her memoir also discusses that when marriages failed it was exceptionally hard on women.  Couples would try to reconcile their differences but if they couldn’t they would need to separate.  Why was it extremely hard for women to obtain divorces? Nick Jesionka&lt;br /&gt;
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I was mortified by women’s inability to protect their own children from the authority of their husbands. Abigail Bailey rightly suspected misbehavior on the part of her husband but she could not even share her fears with anyone. However, eventually Abigail Bailey reminded her husband that a marriage was supposed to be mutually beneficial.  Although she was under his complete authority, he promised her fidelity and protection. You could almost detect the triumph in her tone when she asserted that she was seeking a separation because he did not hold up his end of the bargain. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that this document about Abigail Bailey and her husband’s incestuous obsession with their daughter is very disturbing. The status of the “feme covert” along with a general issue of family virtue kept both mother and daughter from successfully stopping the husband’s / father’s infidelity except for through the help of male relatives. This shows that women were doubly controlled (perhaps in equal efficacy) in their actions not only through legal rights but also morality and their ability to uphold family honor facing civic supervision and judgment. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== New Spain’s (New Mexico’s) moral code as dictated by the Spanish Crown in 1752 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Laws on Slave Descent in VA and MD, 1662, 1664, 1691, 1692 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I am completely shocked by some of these laws. Basically, if I understood the readings correctly, freewomen who had children with slaves, could then be subject to slavery herself. Is that right? I found it particularly disturbing that under the Virginia, 1691 law, if a woman has a bastard, half negro child, then she owes the church to which she belongs a fine of 15 pounds. Also, she has to serve time as a slave at the discretion of the church, and her child is at the discretion/mercy of the church as well. I thought this was completely illogical, unethical, and against everything moral that I know in life. I think that once again, these laws are a reflection of the FEAR that white men have, of women and people of different ethnicities than their own. How lame!--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 18:47, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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This article which addresses Virginia and Maryland laws on the status of interracial liaisons and resulting children was very specific in stating the differences held for men and women and the legal status of the children.  It was stated in the beginning that these laws were to discourage and prevent interracial relations but they also show the real concerns addressing issues of ambiguity on the legal status of the children and sexual partners as well as controlling social morality. I am especially interested in the reasons for these laws concerning white women and their children with male slaves. How necessary was the need for these preventative laws? Were there many cases in which these laws were actually enforced? When did this really become an issue?-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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I was shocked with the extremity of the laws that were in place in regards to relations between white colonists and slaves. Children of mixed decent seemed to have almost as poor a lot in life as slave children, since they were bound to servitude for up to thirty years in Virginia. I was surprised that the penalties for men and women were so strict, I wonder if this is a reflection on the emphasis and influence of church and religion in the lives of the colonists. Obviously it must have been considered a sin and one of serious moral repercussions. What would be the penalty for any of the slaves in question? Since they were already bound in servitude was a punishment considered unnecessary? I also found myself wondering if this was a common occurrence at the time.---Emma Peck&lt;br /&gt;
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== Skilled slaves in Maryland, 1748-1763, Maryland Gazette ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Complaint of Elizabeth Sprigs, indentured servant, 1756 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Elizabeth&amp;#039;s Sprigs complaint to her father is pretty sad. I am not sure if all she says is true. She might be exaggerating bu then again maybe she is not. I really wish we knew what she did to get her father to throw her on a ship where she was indentured. I felt terrible for her as she asks for clothes and not something else she may have wanted. The short but vivid description really worked and if i were her father I would send her the clothes if not paying out so she would not be indentured. I never really thought about being indentured could be as bad as being a slave. -LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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The reading that stuck out to me the most was the Sprigs reading. Here we have a girl in Maryland writing a letter to her father in England asking for aid. Why is she doing this? Because he sent her away as an indentured servant as a punishment for bad conduct and disobedience! Huh. Um, I’m thinking this is maybe a bit of an overreaction on daddy’s part. Still, if that’s not an incentive to be well behaved I don’t know what is. Is this the 17th century equivalent of taking your kid into a jail cell to scare them straight? Whether or not Elizabeth is exaggerating her condition (which Wolach suggests she is not) is less important than the very fact that her father could make her an indentured servant in the first place. As his daughter, she’s essentially his property, and he has the power to sell her, rent her off, whatever. What happened if she survived her indenture? Was she free and left in the colonies or was she sent back to her father? How often did this happen to other girls? Would her father have sent a son away for misbehaving? And what &amp;#039;&amp;#039;exactly&amp;#039;&amp;#039; did she do to make him react like this? --Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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== Apprenticeship in PA, 1771-1773, Record of Indentures ==&lt;br /&gt;
The list of indentures of 1771-1773 was interesting to read. The document mentioned that women apprenticeship was different than that of young men, which was unsurprising. Most of the work and skills learned by the females was housewifery, to read the bible, or write legibly. The entries listed were of women whose terms were anywhere between three to fourteen years. I thought that was a very long time. One example is of a woman named Abigail Adams, whose term was 14 years and one month, was taught to read the bible, write legibly, learn multiplication, and houswifery. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== Advertisements, Gazettes of VA, PA, SC, NY – 1751-1776 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I was surprised that there were so many advertisements for schools for young women. I found the ad for Mrs. Duneau&amp;#039;s boarding school in South Carolina very interesting. Most of the other ads mentioned teaching needlework to the young ladies, but that was one of the only subjects that was taught. However, Mrs. Duneau&amp;#039;s school taught French, English, math, geography, writing, and of course, needlework. I was also surprised that many of the school&amp;#039;s included gentlemen and young women in their ads. This is probably because many of the schools were opened and operated by women. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the advertisements pretty interesting. I am from Williamsburg so had seen some advertisements for schools for young women before; learning to sew, how to become a proper lady, housewifery, etc, but never had seen one for a young man. I knew they had apprenticeships but did not know they attended schools like women did. I also found interesting how different the ad for a school was compared to that of finding a slave, both adverstisements are looking for people and how women were referred to in a slave ad compared to wanting a young woman, &amp;quot;proper young lady&amp;quot; for a school. -Megan W.&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
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		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_3_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 3 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
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				<updated>2009-09-10T05:42:48Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Laws on Slave Descent in VA and MD, 1662, 1664, 1691, 1692 */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Overarching/comparative comments ==&lt;br /&gt;
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In the Nancy Woloch reading I found the use of the family to be very functional to the colonizers, and it changed greatly through time based off of necessity. This meant major changes in the placement of women in society. In 1672 family was a “fundamental economic unit” (25) and meant the health of the colony. Due to the focus on family harmony, women were able to remarry and create new homes that would be more beneficial to society. Furthermore, men often left their estates to their spouse. This meant that women had a certain amount of power. By 1712, the power of women was minimized and a hierarchy among the family unit arose where men were on top, then women, followed by male children and female children. At this time, women were supposed to be obedient to their husbands, and in return, the husbands would treat the women as a piece of themselves. Divorce was rare. By 1815, women had virtually no power. Divorce was almost non-existent and “married women had no independent legal existence, property rights, or control over their children”(42). Women’s roles changed quickly based off of what function the family needed to have at that particular time. It’s no wonder why so many women ran away. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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After spending some time last week learning about the lifestyles of the Native American women, through the lense of the somewhat bias English colonists, I found it interesting this week to see that as the settlers faced certain unfamiliar obstacles in their new surroundings, they adapted to many of the Native Americans&amp;#039; way of life. It almost seems like once they had to roll their sleeves up and actually make a living for themselves here, they realized that at times-- women must tend the field, people must marry several times, and community networks become the heart of the social structure, all of which had been elements of Native American life that the colonists had previously thought to be unnatural.--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 17:44, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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== Katherine Kish Sklar article, “To Use her as His Wife” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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It is stated on page 80 that Martha Root pushed her claim against Elisha even though her actions incurred further risks to her reputation and hence to her future ability to marry. So why would she do this? Another question that came up in the reading was the issue of marriage. Would Martha have even wanted to marry Elisha after he ruined her reputation? --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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It seemed that most of a woman&amp;#039;s support in a case of having a child out of wedlock came from the church, which i find surprising because of the &amp;quot;man being above the woman&amp;quot; idea that they followed. In the article wasn&amp;#039;t it the church that took the father of the child to court after Martha received a settlement? - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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== Benjamin Wadsworth, 1712 – Well-Ordered Family ==&lt;br /&gt;
Wadsworth begins by talking about how a husband and a wife are supposed to love each other, take care of each other when they are sick..etc. I was surprised when I first read this because it seemed almost like an equal relationship. Of course, then I read the part about the husband being the wife&amp;#039;s head and that he is meant to govern over her. Wadsworth says that the &amp;quot;husband&amp;#039;s government ought to be gentle and easy, and the wife&amp;#039;s obedience ready and cheerful&amp;quot;. I think Wadsworth&amp;#039;s choice of words is important. He makes it sound that like the husbands gently guide the wives along and that the wives are happy to be told what to do. The influence of religion on married life is very evident. Quarelling is &amp;quot;the Devil&amp;#039;s work&amp;quot; and it dishonors God. Today, it&amp;#039;s pretty clear that every married couple argues sometimes and that doesn&amp;#039;t mean you are doing the &amp;quot;devil&amp;#039;s work&amp;quot;. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Katelyn. When I first read this, it seemed as if he were counting men and women to be (almost) the same, then he pulls the whole, &amp;quot;man is the woman&amp;#039;s head&amp;quot; thing. The quote that really caught my eye was when he was talking to women and said, &amp;quot;God has made him (husband), your head, and set him above you, and made it your duty to love and revere him.&amp;quot; So, there is a STRONG implication that men ruling women is a religious decree and anyone who were to break that would then be unholy.-Kristina.S.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with both of the comments made by Katelyn and Kristina, the article by Wadsworth really struck me. The quote on page 27 stuck out &amp;quot;[f]amily, whatever its liabilities, remained the most important social institution...&amp;quot; Women could not do anything outside of the family, were required to fall back on it, and let her husband have complete rule over her and if he died before her, the eldest son took over the estate. It was a never-ending cycle once a woman was married that she was never to have control over her mind/body/land/or any other asset. Religion was a much stronger contributing factor in those days, but did God really approve of a women becoming completely inferior to her husband? I do not think that is written in the Bible, so did colonists relate problems back to Adam and Eve instead? -Megan W.&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with the previous comments made about the Husbands and Wives Article written by Benjamin Wadsworth. At the very beginning it seems that  men and women are equal by saying that there love is mutual and it should be performed by each and overall that they both needed to work together in order to have a good family. Then Wadsworth’s views turn completely around by saying “the husband is called the head of the woman” and that they ought to be under their husband’s government. Did all Puritan men around this time feel the same way as Wadsworth?   Nick  J&lt;br /&gt;
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Benjamin Wadsworth’s description of marriage seemed ironic. Marriage was meant to involve mutual affection, yet the husband was always in charge of the wife and the wife was always supposed to be obedient to the husband. I thought the end of Wadsworth’s account was funny because he reminded women that although they really may be superior to their husbands in intelligence, wealth, and class, God still intended them to be ruled by these stupid, poor, common men. That made me wonder if Puritans considered gender roles more binding than social class. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Allison about how ironic his description of marriage was. He says &amp;quot;It is their duty to dwell together with one another.&amp;quot; (P. 28) The ironic thing was that he says how men and women should &amp;quot;dwell&amp;quot; together, which implies equality, yet he says the woman must submit to the husband and obey him. Another interesting thing I found was that Wadsworth says &amp;quot;Though he governs her he must not treat her as a servant, but as his own flesh; he must love her as himself.&amp;quot; (P. 29) Wadsworth contradicts himself because he makes references such as the &amp;quot;husband&amp;#039;s government&amp;quot; yet calls for men to see their wives as equals. --- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Susanna Wesley, 1732, Evangelical Child-Rearing ==&lt;br /&gt;
The letter from Susanna Wesley was by far the most impressionable reading, to me, this week. The best way for me to put it is that it really freaked me out. I suppose it is because her methods of child-rearing were a bit alien to the methods of the typical American family today. Yet, I actually found it interesting that I did see some similarities :(on the bottom of page 32) she talks about rewarding children for doing good things, which I think is a relatively good policy. Throughout the reading I felt like she was talking about some well trained dogs that she had, not her children. It was literally as if she were training pets. A particular sentence caught my eye, on page 32, where she said &amp;quot;That civil behavior which made them admired when they were at home by all who saw them was in a great measure lost,...&amp;quot; I can just imagine her friends coming over for lunch one day and commenting on how well trained her children are. Now, I am all for well behaved children, but the methods by which she makes them so well behaved seems a little too excessive. They are not allowed to be kids. They are adults by the time they are old enough to walk. Was this a typical religious family upbringing in the 1700&amp;#039;s?-Kristina .S.&lt;br /&gt;
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Susanna Wesley has some pretty interesting instructions of how to raise children. I know that the Puritans thought that children were born evil and needed to be taught right and wrong but I think her methods were rather excessive. Before a child is one year old they were taught to &amp;quot;fear the rod&amp;quot;. We would call beating children child abuse. I did not like her strict routine and none of us would ever survive if we had to live in that time now. The only part I liked about her essay was how she thought girls should be able to read above all other things. I think that is very important for girls especially in a time period where many could not read. LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with what LeAnn mentioned above- I did think it was interesting that Susanna thought that young girls should be taught to read before they learn skills such as sewing, etc. By placing an emphasis on education, I think she also might be reflecting some of the beliefs of the Puritan society in general. However, I am not sure if the Puritan emphasis on education and self-improvement applied just to males or to women and young girls, as well? Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s statement, certainly, makes it seem as if this belief and value was extended to women, as well- but I am not sure if the Wesley family was an exception or reflective of the greater society as a whole. I also wonder about the role of region in influencing educational practices- did the southern colonies place such an emphasis on educating males (and perhaps females, as well), or was their focus more on commercial production, etc.? I think Susanna&amp;#039;s statement brings up questions not only of gender roles and expectations but also the influence of geography and location. - Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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One thing to keep in mind is that Susanna Wesley rules may not have reflected that of the majority of people living in England at the time. The reading says that she is from a place called Lincolnshire, from which many Puritans migrated. I think that her &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; made sense for her particular lifestyle, but I also think that some of the ideas that Wesley, and the Puritans were indoctoring into their children may not have been condusive to the mission of colonization. After all, at a time when people are trying to settle a new area, and are faced with unfamiliar lands, it seems that for practical purposes they should have encouraged free thinking, imagination, and ingenuity from their youth. --[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 17:55, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I’m not surprised that this document is one of the ones most commented on because it did leave a very strong impression on the reader. In a time where there have been countless debates over spanking children as punishment, the idea of a parent using a rod to frighten a child barely one year old so that they cry softly seems absurd. &lt;br /&gt;
Another thing I found rather odd in the letter was on page 31 “nor were they ever permitted to call each other by their proper names without the addition of brother or sister.” Nowadays I don’t know anyone who calls their sibling “brother” or “brother Jacob” (unless you count Buster in the tv series Arrested Development). The relationship between siblings today is a rather casual one, usually including nicknames for each other not calling each other by their family relationship. The addition of the title “brother” or “Sister” to one’s name brought about the image of a monastery or an Abbey in my mind. --Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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I found reading Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s letter to be very enlightening. Many people see women being at home as a simple task and not very important, yet Wesley contradicts that view. She explains all the different methods that are used for raising a child throughout their young years and I realized that a great amount of work and time was placed into this. What I found especially interesting was how important it was for girls to be taught to read. We always talk about how women did not learn to read or write during this time,  yet Wesley says &amp;quot;That no girl be taught to work till she can read very well.&amp;quot; (Page 33) The way she stressed the importance of reading for girls struck me as odd and enlightening, and glad that she understood the importance of educating women, rather than just confining them to household duties as they were accustomed to. ---- Alex Mankarios&lt;br /&gt;
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== Eliza Pinckney, 1750s, To Improve in Every Virtue ==&lt;br /&gt;
Eliza Pinckney&amp;#039;s list of resolutions explains a lot about all of the roles that women were expected to fill in early America. Her first few resolutions are religious. She wanted to be a better Christian and to trust in God. Some of her other resolutions seem similar to many common resolutions today. When she says she wants &amp;quot;to be decent but frugal in my own expences&amp;quot;, she sounds like many women who vow to stop spending so much money on themselves. She also vows to be a better wife, mother, daughter, and friend. These resolutions are probably the New Year&amp;#039;s resolutions of women today. I think it was important to read the piece by Pinckney. It shows all of the different roles that women are expected to fill, many of which are still relevant today.- Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked the document by Eliza Pinckney. It showcased one woman&amp;#039;s focus in her life during the eighteenth-century. Along with other women of the time who lived in the colonies, Pinckney devoted most of her time and attention to her family. Each year she addressed the fact that her husband, children, and relatives were very important to her and wanted to do and be everything she could for them. Today, women and men alike, make resolutions to become a better wife, mother, father, or brother. I thought it was interesting that Pinckney&amp;#039;s actions paralleled those that can be seen today in the twenty first century. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading Eliza Pinckney&amp;#039;s document. Not only did she illustrate common colonial gender roles regarding family and religious piety, but she also seemed to have a genuinely good heart. It was somewhat surprising to read her resolutions regarding slaves. She talks about being a &amp;quot;Good Mistress&amp;quot; and wishes not to be &amp;quot;tyrannical&amp;quot; over them. This is not the image of slave ownership that many white males seem to paint in their documents. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Esther Burr, 1756-57, Tied hand and foot ==&lt;br /&gt;
In Esther Burr&amp;#039;s journal you can see the basis she has in Puritan traditions.  She relies on her faith, family, and her social network of friends.  She refers to doing a lot of spinning, taking care of her children and awaiting her husband arrival from trips.  She implicates in her letter to her friend that she must marry and not wait so long to do so.  Also, at the same time she&amp;#039;s not afraid to share her opinion, not that she does it that often.  She even astonishes herself when she makes a comment about what Mr. Ewing says about women and friendships.  She was not afraid to hold her tongue &amp;quot;I talked him quite silent.&amp;quot;  The men around her were either appalled by her comments or surprised that she had an opinion on the idea of women not being capable of having friendships.  The perception that men had of women was very different then.  I think there were women in society (especially those from the elite) that were very intellectual.  Were they afraid to show their intellectual abilities in public around males in society?  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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I think that is a really good question- perhaps women of colonial America were afraid to appear &amp;quot;superior&amp;quot; in some ways to some men, or that they were worried they would be judged critically for stepping outside of traditional gender roles and boundaries. I think a lot of men in the colonial period might have taken women for granted, in a way, and assumed certain gender roles and behavior as &amp;quot;fact&amp;quot;, rather than allowing for interpretation or allowing each individual women to define who she was for herself. I think many males may have seen colonial women as a large, homogenous group with similar qualities (often dictated, perhaps, by the males themselves or by societal customs)rather than as individual people with distinct and different character traits and aspirations. - Allison Godart&lt;br /&gt;
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We talked about the people of the Chesapeake forming networks of mutual aid beyond family because extended kin was very rare. In New England, families have more strength, but there are still societal similarities to the Chesapeake. New England colonists had extended networks, particularly expressed through friendships, as seen with Esther Burr and her friend Sally Prince. Gossip certainly had a powerful role in maintaining or ruining reputations, with the extreme being represented in the Salem Witch Trials. And of course, these friendships and close knit community resulted in meddling. Esther seemed very much interested in her friend’s personal life, and apparently Mr. Burr had a great love for matchmaking (which is stereotypically regarded as a feminine trait, making for entertaining reading). However, Sally seemingly had a certain measure of control in being able to avoid the man courting her, though societal norms, represented in this case by Ester and her reprimands, were pushing her towards marriage. -- Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I enjoyed the letters by Esther Burr they provided a lot more insight into the daily wives of women at the time. Though I do wonder why it was necessary to write to her friend about how April 6-9 was “all devoted to spinning folks.” The most interesting section to me was April 13, 1756 when she writes “How shall I get along when I have got ½ dzn. Or 10 Children I cant devise.” We’ve seen graphs and statistics of the demographics of the time period but just to see a woman write nonchalantly about having 6-10 children, as if it really was no big deal, stuck out at me. However, I suppose this is because of the differences between now and then. --Megan Mc.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Abigail Bailey, 1815, Abominable Wickedness ==&lt;br /&gt;
Abigail Bailey&amp;#039;s memoir was very interesting to read.  Laws intended for men and women did not always protect women.  Probably not in this case either.  Abigail admits her loyalties to her husband but when she realizes her husband is having an incestuous realtionship with their daughter she is unable to ignore it.  She confronts him and threatens to take him to justice.  She justifies her actions by saying to him that she is &amp;quot;acting on principle and with mature consideration.&amp;quot;  She knew that if her daughter did not testify against her father that it would be very hard to prove what he had done.  She probably felt that one would believe her.  Afterall, Abigail was a woman and women should not speak out against their husbands.  The value of a man&amp;#039;s word over a womans was not the same then.  Instead of putting her daughter through the ridicule of the community she confronts her husband.  She threatens to use the process of the law to scare him.  She believes that the legal system will not uphold the law for her.  Abigail uses the one power she does have over her husband - she refuses to be intimate with him.  &lt;br /&gt;
-Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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Abigale Bailey&amp;#039;s piece was quite disturbing. I felt that after reading about so much virtue in Eliza Pincknery&amp;#039;s piece and the Susanna Wesley&amp;#039;s letter&amp;#039;s concerning religious practices and child-rearing, this piece was juxtaposed to the previous documents. It is not shocking that a man, a father in 1815 could virtually get away with molestation and incest, especially since as Mr. B noted, that Abigale was &amp;quot;under his legal control&amp;quot;. It just illustrates the hard lines drawn between the genders and how women, who seemed to have at least a modicum of control in the child rearing and household affairs actually had no say at all. I felt proud of Abigale to vocalize her fears and suspicions at the cost of her reputation and, as she felt her safety. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I thought An abominable wickedness written by Abigail Bailey was very fascinating. An abominable wickedness was about Abigial Bailey finding out that husband had slept with one of their children. First off that is really sick to think that the father would sleep with one of their own children. In early 19th century America there was little that Abigail Bailey could do about this horrible situation.  She did not have prove that her husband was having a relationship with one of their daughters and also she could not get her daughter to testify against him. Also even if she did have information against her husband the Massachusetts Court would have sided with the men and not the women. Her memoir also discusses that when marriages failed it was exceptionally hard on women.  Couples would try to reconcile their differences but if they couldn’t they would need to separate.  Why was it extremely hard for women to obtain divorces? Nick Jesionka&lt;br /&gt;
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I was mortified by women’s inability to protect their own children from the authority of their husbands. Abigail Bailey rightly suspected misbehavior on the part of her husband but she could not even share her fears with anyone. However, eventually Abigail Bailey reminded her husband that a marriage was supposed to be mutually beneficial.  Although she was under his complete authority, he promised her fidelity and protection. You could almost detect the triumph in her tone when she asserted that she was seeking a separation because he did not hold up his end of the bargain. -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that this document about Abigail Bailey and her husband’s incestuous obsession with their daughter is very disturbing. The status of the “feme covert” along with a general issue of family virtue kept both mother and daughter from successfully stopping the husband’s / father’s infidelity except for through the help of male relatives. This shows that women were doubly controlled (perhaps in equal efficacy) in their actions not only through legal rights but also morality and their ability to uphold family honor facing civic supervision and judgment. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== New Spain’s (New Mexico’s) moral code as dictated by the Spanish Crown in 1752 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Laws on Slave Descent in VA and MD, 1662, 1664, 1691, 1692 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I am completely shocked by some of these laws. Basically, if I understood the readings correctly, freewomen who had children with slaves, could then be subject to slavery herself. Is that right? I found it particularly disturbing that under the Virginia, 1691 law, if a woman has a bastard, half negro child, then she owes the church to which she belongs a fine of 15 pounds. Also, she has to serve time as a slave at the discretion of the church, and her child is at the discretion/mercy of the church as well. I thought this was completely illogical, unethical, and against everything moral that I know in life. I think that once again, these laws are a reflection of the FEAR that white men have, of women and people of different ethnicities than their own. How lame!--[[User:Mturner|Mary Turner]] 18:47, 9 September 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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This article which addresses Virginia and Maryland laws on the status of interracial liaisons and resulting children was very specific in stating the differences held for men and women and the legal status of the children.  It was stated in the beginning that these laws were to discourage and prevent interracial relations but they also show the real concerns addressing issues of ambiguity on the legal status of the children and sexual partners as well as controlling social morality. I am especially interested in the reasons for these laws concerning white women and their children with male slaves. How necessary was the need for these preventative laws? Were there many cases in which these laws were actually enforced? When did this really become an issue?-- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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I was shocked with the extremity of the laws that were in place in regards to relations between white colonists and slaves. Children of mixed decent seemed to have almost as poor a lot in life as slave children, since they were bound to servitude for up to thirty years in Virginia. I was surprised that the penalties for men and women were so strict, I wonder if this is a reflection on the emphasis and influence of church and religion in the lives of the colonists. Obviously it must have been considered a sin and one of serious moral repercussions. What would be the penalty for any of the slaves in question? Since they were already bound in servitude was a punishment considered unnecessary? I also found myself wondering if this was a common occurrence at the time.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Skilled slaves in Maryland, 1748-1763, Maryland Gazette ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Complaint of Elizabeth Sprigs, indentured servant, 1756 ==&lt;br /&gt;
Elizabeth&amp;#039;s Sprigs complaint to her father is pretty sad. I am not sure if all she says is true. She might be exaggerating bu then again maybe she is not. I really wish we knew what she did to get her father to throw her on a ship where she was indentured. I felt terrible for her as she asks for clothes and not something else she may have wanted. The short but vivid description really worked and if i were her father I would send her the clothes if not paying out so she would not be indentured. I never really thought about being indentured could be as bad as being a slave. -LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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The reading that stuck out to me the most was the Sprigs reading. Here we have a girl in Maryland writing a letter to her father in England asking for aid. Why is she doing this? Because he sent her away as an indentured servant as a punishment for bad conduct and disobedience! Huh. Um, I’m thinking this is maybe a bit of an overreaction on daddy’s part. Still, if that’s not an incentive to be well behaved I don’t know what is. Is this the 17th century equivalent of taking your kid into a jail cell to scare them straight? Whether or not Elizabeth is exaggerating her condition (which Wolach suggests she is not) is less important than the very fact that her father could make her an indentured servant in the first place. As his daughter, she’s essentially his property, and he has the power to sell her, rent her off, whatever. What happened if she survived her indenture? Was she free and left in the colonies or was she sent back to her father? How often did this happen to other girls? Would her father have sent a son away for misbehaving? And what &amp;#039;&amp;#039;exactly&amp;#039;&amp;#039; did she do to make him react like this? --Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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== Apprenticeship in PA, 1771-1773, Record of Indentures ==&lt;br /&gt;
The list of indentures of 1771-1773 was interesting to read. The document mentioned that women apprenticeship was different than that of young men, which was unsurprising. Most of the work and skills learned by the females was housewifery, to read the bible, or write legibly. The entries listed were of women whose terms were anywhere between three to fourteen years. I thought that was a very long time. One example is of a woman named Abigail Adams, whose term was 14 years and one month, was taught to read the bible, write legibly, learn multiplication, and houswifery. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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== Advertisements, Gazettes of VA, PA, SC, NY – 1751-1776 ==&lt;br /&gt;
I was surprised that there were so many advertisements for schools for young women. I found the ad for Mrs. Duneau&amp;#039;s boarding school in South Carolina very interesting. Most of the other ads mentioned teaching needlework to the young ladies, but that was one of the only subjects that was taught. However, Mrs. Duneau&amp;#039;s school taught French, English, math, geography, writing, and of course, needlework. I was also surprised that many of the school&amp;#039;s included gentlemen and young women in their ads. This is probably because many of the schools were opened and operated by women. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the advertisements pretty interesting. I am from Williamsburg so had seen some advertisements for schools for young women before; learning to sew, how to become a proper lady, housewifery, etc, but never had seen one for a young man. I knew they had apprenticeships but did not know they attended schools like women did. I also found interesting how different the ad for a school was compared to that of finding a slave, both adverstisements are looking for people and how women were referred to in a slave ad compared to wanting a young woman, &amp;quot;proper young lady&amp;quot; for a school. -Megan W.&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

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		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_2_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 2 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_2_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-09-03T04:50:02Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Ann Marie Plane&amp;#039;s essay */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;== Cross-reading Questions -- These are particularly important... ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Just and observation I&amp;#039;ve made: the readings in Woloch about the rules and conduct that men and women should follow is a striking resemblence to social rules set forth by Confucius and his followers in China several hundred years prior to this. It just seems interesting to me that although the Europeans at this time always thought of themselves as superior to other peoples and cultures, that people in China hundreds of years before had already discussed and implemented these social rules. - Will Hechmer&lt;br /&gt;
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For the readings this week I came up with a question that related throughout all of the texts:&lt;br /&gt;
1. Why did Native American women&amp;#039;s roles offend the Europeans and do we think it still would today? Or have the perceptions the Europeans had of women shape women&amp;#039;s traditional roles today?&lt;br /&gt;
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A common feature I noticed within the captive stories and whether they were able to adjust to their new lives appears to be their age and the roles in which they assumed.  As with Mary Jemison and also John Tanner, they were both young without attachments, and could easily adapt into their new lives as made easier by being fully adopted into the tribe as a sister / daughter and son / brother.  In the case of Mary R, she was a middle aged woman, set in her ways, having a husband back home as well as a church, friends, and a role within American society in which she was part of. These differences appear to have an effect on how the captives adjust to their new lives or not in these particular sources, and makes me wonder if this could be common to others as well or if there are other factors that were missed. – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Roger Williams Remarks on Narragansett women – 1643 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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After reading the Roger Williams little excerpt about him and his findings on the language and the people on the Narragansett women, I am left wondering how does he seem to have such a different view than other Europeans of his time.  He believes that the land belonds to the Native Americas; he even tries to live and learn from them, to study them, even going so far as to publish a dictionary on their language arranged topically.  What makes his perspective so different from the other European documentations and studies?  - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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While reading Roger Williams&amp;#039; Narragansett Women, I noticed that his description of the labor that the females did was, in his mind, much more challenging than described by John Heckewelder and Mary Jemison. I also noticed a parallel between Mary Rowlandson and Williams opinion that as Williams put it, &amp;quot;Indian women has escaped Gods curse on Eve.&amp;quot; Of course Rowlandson described these feeling in a negative light but the idea was certainly the same. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== John Heckewelder’s 1819, Women’s Lives among the Delaware ==&lt;br /&gt;
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John Heckewelder describes the Native American women in Delaware. He comments about the differences and some of the aspects of lives between the Native Americans&amp;#039; lifestyles and the Europeans&amp;#039;. Among them are marriages: marriages among the Indians are not contracted for life. He also mentions the varying work men and women have. Men construct the house in which they are to live in, hunts, traps. Women take care of the home, sometimes become their husband&amp;#039;s helpmate while he is hunting, tills the ground, gets the firewood, and pounds the corn in mortars. I think this group of Native American women followed the same kind of pattern that most European women followed at the time and would not offend most outsiders. Heckewelder&amp;#039;s notes may prove that because most of the duties of the Native American women were similar to that of European women, there was no real reason to be shocked or offended. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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John Heckewelder’s description of Women’s Lives Among the Delaware is a much different account than from what other colonizers have described. While many Europeans have a biased view through ethnocentric eyes, Heckewelder seemed to empathize with the Native American way of life. Though I do think that he viewed his way of life as better and more civilized, he sees Native American way of life as understandable for a less civilized group.  While he believes that Native American women’s work is difficult compared to women’s work in the civilized world, it is nothing compared to the work of the men. Heckewelder’s description of the women’s work as well as marriage practices seems much nicer than other descriptions from onlookers of the time who had a cynical view. The Native American family/societal structure seems like a nice way for women to live, to work cheerfully, to raise families, and to have the ability to leave when unhappy. I wonder if it is because John Heckewelder was able to live among the Indians for 15 years that he was able to see the true side of Native American life, rather then traders whose observations were short lived and distant. --Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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John Heckewelder&amp;#039;s description of a woman&amp;#039;s role in society is still seen through a Europeans eyes though I agree with Erin that it was less so then other European observers it is still bias. He still believes that women have no power where men have all the power in society. I liked that he grasped the fact that the women did not think they were being worked like slaves by farming. I would also like to note that Heckewelder when talking about marriages only mentioned that women will please her husband so that he will not leave her but said nothing about men pleasing their wives. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Pierre de Charlevoix, 1721, “Iroquois Women in Government” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Pierre de Charlevoix&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Iroquois Women in Government&amp;quot; seemed on the surface to glorify the hierarchy which held women at the top but unraveled into an explanation of how Iroquois men only allowed the women to seem powerful. I wonder how much of Charlevoix&amp;#039;s account was true and how much was a biased opinion based in Western ideals of the Patriarch Royalty. This piece prompts me to wonder if Charlevoix felt challenged by the reversal of gender empowerment and the implication and influence that could have on western women.  - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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In this article  Pierre de Charlevoix writes about how Iroquois women had a substantial role in their government. Even though it was rare for women to rise to the position of chief, the role of chief was inherited through the matrilineal line.  As we discussed in class the older women of the tribe could unseat male chiefs.  The Iroquois women had a lot more political opportunities than their European and fellow Indian counterparts. After reading the article I wonder why Native American Women had less political opportunities than the Iroquois. Nick Jesionka &lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Rowlandson’s account (1681) and Mary Jemison’s account (1824) ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Also a topic I found important between the articles written by both &amp;quot;Mary&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; were the differences/similarities of the women&amp;#039;s experiences with the Eastern Woodland Native Americans. How each woman&amp;#039;s experience varied based off tribe/age of capture/and release date (if released). -Megan&lt;br /&gt;
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I was particularly interested in the role religion played in their experiences, especially Mary Rowlandson.  Her faith seemed to justify her experience, which in turn strengthened her sense of righteousness in the face of perceived barbarism.  The topic of Christianity shaping the colonists&amp;#039; interactions with the native Americans seems important when looking at the overall experience.  --Erin B.&lt;br /&gt;
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Mary Jemison provided an interesting point of view in which she is not entirely dis fond of living with the Indians. She was captured and lived with the Seneca Iroquois tribe for many years. I think this is an interesting example of another way that Europeans, especially European men, were shocked with the Native Americans and their lifestyle. Many white female captives were treated humanely, took up the duties of the women of the tribe, and may have been treated more equally than if they returned to white society. This decision was confusing to most white men. -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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I really enjoyed reading both of these accounts. They were both so varied that it was interesting to see the differences and similarities among the captive&amp;#039;s situations. The main issue that caught my eye in the Rowlandson account was the employ of God during her whole captive experience. She would quote the bible and see situations through a very thick religious lens. I particularly liked how she commented on page 18 that &amp;quot;strangely did the lord provide for them.&amp;quot; Essentially, wondering why, if God was on her (and the English peoples) side then why was he letting the &amp;quot;heathens&amp;quot; live? It is something that she brings up a couple of times through her account. But, what I found interesting was that she believed her God was watching over the Natives, even though they were not Christians. (at least that was how it seemed to me)&lt;br /&gt;
In the Jemison account, I really liked how she talked about the benefits for women living among the Seneca tribe. And how she even compared, on the bottom of page 21, the Native woman’s life to that of an English woman’s.-Kristia S.&lt;br /&gt;
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The accounts of Mary Rowlandson and Mary Jemison who were captured by Native Americans were the most interesting things I read. I though it was fascinating in Rowlandsons account how one minute they were going to bash her head in and the next her master was giving her water to wash with and being kind. Mary Jemison had a more positive account of Native Americans and I liked how she said Native Americans were only cruel to their enemies but to their friends they were wonderful. That is not so different from the Europeans who were also cruel to their enemies. --LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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== Samuel de Champlain, 1616 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The Champlain and Heckewelder readings provide as interesting contrast in the interpretations by Europeans regarding Native Americans. About a hundred years separates their accounts. Champlain was, of course, an explorer, and Heckenwelder was a missionary trying to convert the Indians to Christianity. Champlain comments on the figures of the Indians, with a special interest in the women’s appearances, including the fact that “their breasts hang down hardly at all.” Truly an important thing to note. He also tends towards the idea that the men are lazy and the women do most of the work. Heckewelder doesn’t bother commenting on appearances, perhaps due to his being a missionary, but he labels the women’s work as “quickly and easily performed.” Their fatigue is not comparable to the tireless work of the hunting men. Though the interpretations differ on the view of labor and gender roles (which may be a result of the particular tribe they visited and at what time of the year), both accounts are influenced by European thinking. Champlain writes the men off as lazy and unmanly because they appear to lie around while the women do the farming. Heckewelder completely dismisses women’s work, putting forth that the families depend solely on the men’s hunting. --Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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The article that Samuel de Champlain writes about Huron Women is good account of Native American Women. In the article he discusses the roles of women and men and how to him they women do a lot more work then the men do. He called the men lazy and described the women as really hard working and having most of the responsibilities. Overall it was a good account of the Huron tribe. Nick Jesionka&lt;br /&gt;
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== Mary Musgrove assists the Georgians in Dealing with the Choctaws, 1734 &amp;amp; Mary Musgrove Seeks aid for past service from GA, 1747 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Captive John Tanner in 1830 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The major thought that came to my mind while reading this was how multiple Native American women wanted a young white son.  I feel that if the roles were reversed and a white woman had a male Native captive, there wouldn&amp;#039;t be any other woman who would want him or any hostility regarding it.  I find it interesting that he was so valued that Net-no-kwa was so interested in having him. Did they find the whites valuable or was he simply filling the role of a son?  - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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== Father Le Jeune on necessity of teaching native women, 1633 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Native women resist Jesuits, 1640 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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== Wamponoag women of Martha’s Vineyard, 1727 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The readings provided some thoughtful insights into changing Native American lifestyles as colonists worked towards converting them to Christianity. Particularly interesting to me was determining the reasons why some women were easily converted (at least outwardly) and some women were very resistant. In one reading a women runs away, not “wishing to obey her husband” in his desire to convert, risking harsh retribution, while in another reading the women were more receptive and more pious than the men. The second reading also gives some possible reasoning why these women were easier to convert. I think the biggest factor was that many of the women were young and unlikely to be set in their ways, and therefore more receptive to conversion. Sarah Ahhaton&amp;#039;s story provides support for this, as there were older women who were seemingly more traditionalist and subversive in their approach towards the English. --Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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As shown in the Pious Wampanoag Women of Martha’s Vineyard and the Adultery Trial of Sarah Ahhaton, the Europeans seem to be pushing their own ideas of woman morality upon the Native Americans that can be compared to as was made example by Eve from the bible.  As is with the Adultery Trial and some of the conversions, women appear very susceptible to have a lapse in judgment where their passionate natures take them over.  However they are being held accountable for their actions in ways that men are not due to the notion of woman’s virtue and their job of upholding and demonstrating social morals.  I think it is possible that the hope of the Europeans is that should the women at least be successfully converted, the society and future generations will then follow suit and could be as believed half of the battle being already won such as was with the husband of Hannah Tiler who “overcame his evil by her goodness” (MP- Christianity p. 24). – Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Sarah Ahhaton’s trial, 1668 ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The story of Sarah Ahhaton, a Native American woman, is one that shows the dynamics of the old, pre-colonization, ways of life and the new, Christian way of life. In looking at the French Explorer Samuel de Champlain’s description of the lives of Huron Women and Men in 1616, he describes the marriage practices of the Huron. In this pre-colonized society, marriage is much different than the “civilized” Europeans. Women and men were able to be intimate with different individuals without jealousy it was the standard practice. By 1668, when Sarah Ahhaton told her story of adultery, there was a change in marriage practices due to the influence of European colonizers and the spread of Christianity. The change in women’s roles in such a short period of time must have been difficult, and often confusing. In a society were women were highly regarded, their role shifted to one of subordination. –Erin Sanderson &lt;br /&gt;
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== Ann Marie Plane&amp;#039;s essay ==&lt;br /&gt;
In the account of Sarah Ahhaton’s adultery, I was really struck by the double standard for men and women. The rift in her marriage began when her husband, William, was not treating her very well and possibly having an affair of his own. Sarah turned herself in for her crime, but William’s position as an interpreter and Christian minister meant it would not have been difficult for English officials to investigate or correct his behaviors. This response is likely a result of English culture, which viewed women as lascivious and unable to control their desires.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I like how Plane described Native American women as the group whose lives were possibly the most radically changed by European contact. Before contact, Native American gender relations involved a certain amount of give and take. Men may have held leadership positions, but much of their power depended on the support of women. After contact, the power held by men increased and the power held by women decreased. This deprived women of the means to defend themselves, for example, against an abusive husband, as in Sarah Ahhatan’s case.  -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the account of Sarah Ahhatons adultery to be extremely poignant. It truly showed in my opinion some of the negative effects the colonists had on the native americans. In many Native American societies women were highly respected and held a firm place in society and were allowed more freedoms within marriage. Yet Sarahs treatment exhibited none of that kind of treatment. It was evident the influence that the Europeans had on there culture at that point was a negative one. I found the part of the essay where the author discusses the negative aspects of european culture that the Native Americans picked up extremely interesting. Although the protestant marriage was supposed to be a well founded joining of two people in the faith in a happy marriage, women were often treated poorly by there husbands. So even though the Native Americans are being taught by the Christian doctrine they picked up the bad habits of the Europeans instead of the good habits. Also the double standards between men and women were particularly evident in her account of the trial because Joseph who was also married and had committed adultery presumably faced no punishment whatsoever. In addition the claims of adultery that were supposedly committed by her husband didn&amp;#039;t seem to have been investigated any further. -Emma Peck&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

	<entry>
		<id>https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_1_Questions/Comments-327_09</id>
		<title>Week 1 Questions/Comments-327 09</title>
		<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mcclurken.umwhistory.org/wiki/index.php?title=Week_1_Questions/Comments-327_09"/>
				<updated>2009-08-27T05:00:50Z</updated>
		
		<summary type="html">&lt;p&gt;Epeck: /* Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot; */&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;div&gt;Enter your questions &amp;amp; comments on the readings below.&lt;br /&gt;
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== Comments that compare or contrast readings ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with Leslie Alexander that black women can have a place in Women’s History. It will require a lot of necessary changes but it seems that the right steps are begin taken in order for them to have a place in Women’s history.  Steps have been taken such as considering wow race shapes gender instead of gender shaping race.  Only time can tell to see if those steps will work in the future. &lt;br /&gt;
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When reading “Definining ‘American Women’s History&amp;#039;” by Kate Haulman, I was fascinated by how complex American Women’s History is just by looking at the separate words: “American” “Women’s” and “History.” Focusing on the “Women” aspect, Kate Haulman mainly looks at the word “women” in opposition to men and a lump category that all individuals who identify themselves as women fit into. Gisela Bock in “Challenging Dichotomies in Women’s History” looks at the word “women” in terms of the dichotomy of sex versus gender and how people identify themselves (“sex” being biological, “gender” being social). As I read Antonia Castañeda’s essay, “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History” the definition of “women” became even more complex in very important ways because she argues that you can’t look at women as one lump category, you have to reject the idea of a common sisterhood, because such a thing does not exist. Castañeda states, “Women’s gender experiences and definitions were as divers as the cultures from which they came”. Based off of these readings it is clear that no two scholars have the same definitions, so it is important to realize that categories and definitions are dynamic, changing with time and interpretation. –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I found it interesting that all the essays agree that American Women&amp;#039;s History needs some changing.  Whether it be the definition of the field, the ideas, the various aspects (sex, gender, race, political), they all agree it needs some reconstruction. Also, when they touched on the idea that not all women are in this &amp;quot;sisterhood,&amp;quot; it brought a very good point.  Many people lump in all women (regardless of race, class, country of origin) together in the same category, but you don&amp;#039;t see that in other historical subjects. When Bock says &amp;quot;For too long, women have baked the cake and taken only the smallest to eat for themselves,&amp;quot; to me it exemplifies the ever-lasting struggles women have in the &amp;quot;equality versus difference&amp;quot; arena. -  Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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In both Bock(p.8) and Haulman&amp;#039;s(p.4) piece they discuss how the history of women is not just about the oppression of women but the how the confinement to a certain sphere knitted them together and created a unique community. They were not just victims but actively shaped their own lives. What does this mean for studying women&amp;#039;s history? How does seeing women as active in the midst of oppression and not necessarily victims change our view of them? --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 19:14, 26 August 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I believe that two major themes rang throughout all four essays: women&amp;#039;s history thought in male terms and cultural differences affecting the gender experience. The examination of Women&amp;#039;s Studies prior to the 1970&amp;#039;s was thought of in male equivalent terms. An example that Kate Haulman uses in her essay Defining &amp;#039;&amp;#039;&amp;quot;American Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot;&amp;#039;&amp;#039; is that &amp;quot;worthy&amp;quot; women&amp;#039;s history was that of &amp;quot;exceptional&amp;quot; women such as Eleanor Roosevelt or Marie Curie, and that &amp;quot;ordinary&amp;quot; women did not have any historical value. This opinion is further expressed in &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;#039;&amp;#039; &amp;quot;Historical scholarship was far from &amp;#039;objective&amp;#039; or &amp;#039;universal&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Gisela Bock argued, &amp;quot;because it was based on the male experience.&amp;quot; It is refreshing to know that present day studies in Women&amp;#039;s history are based in egalitarian terms between the genders (for the most part at least). The second theme that I found throughout the essays was the attention to the gender experience. Haulman, Castaneda and Alexander agreed that women are not just inherently female; their gender does not wholly define them. Their gender experience is directly influenced by their personal culture and their ethnicity. I agree with this theme because cultural gender interactions are not cookie cutter examples. A woman, or any person for that matter, can not be solely defined by their biological or social gender, we are a collection of personal experience, growth, and culture. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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== Kate Haulman, Defining &amp;quot;American Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Kate Haulman&amp;#039;s essay Defining &amp;quot;American Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot; to be interesting because it is a history of how historians thought about women in history. I never thought about the connotations of this phrase until she pointed it out. Being &amp;quot;American&amp;quot; is an identity that people have. She uses examples such as a textile worker, a Cherokee woman and an African American all of who defined being American differently. The word &amp;quot;women&amp;quot; brings up gender issues. She asks, &amp;quot; What are the consequences of identifying, or being positioned as a woman...&amp;quot; History in this phrase is a study of the past. Haulman thinks that studying woman&amp;#039;s history can frame current debates about justice and human rights and I completely agree with that statement. The more we study women and their issues the more information we will have to help make an informed decision about issues that affect us today. - LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
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As LeAnn and Erin noted, it is interesting how Haulman breaks down &amp;quot;American Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot; into three separate ideas.  Each person has a different connotation about each and when you place all three together, different people can assume different ideas about the subject. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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The historiography by Haulman gives a nice overview of the field of American women’s history studies. It’s somewhat incredible, though not necessarily shocking, that studying women’s history is a rather recent development. Historians have been recounting history for thousands of years, but women’s contributions have been nothing more than a footnote, if even that, for most of that time. Particularly interesting to me was one of the dichotomies the Bock essay mentioned regarding nature vs culture. Women being perceived as “natural” and unchanging labeled them as uninteresting, which vindicated the lack of studying women, while men being perceived as products of culture apparently made them great subjects for study. --Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I liked in Haulman&amp;#039;s essay on page 5 how she asks the question, &amp;quot;If a &amp;#039;man&amp;#039; knits is he still a &amp;#039;man&amp;#039;? And is knitting still a &amp;#039;woman&amp;#039;s&amp;#039; work?&amp;quot; The first thing I thought about when I read that was the modern stay-at-home dads who watch the kids while the woman is the bread winner of the family. Just because the man is the one doing the domestic chores, does that mean he is no longer a man? Perhaps, in societies eyes. Maybe not as much today, but likely in the earlier 20th century. I found it especially interesting that Bock mentions the fatherhood issue breifly in her essay, &amp;quot;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History.&amp;quot;  She writes, on page 9, that &amp;quot;Fatherhood, however, was usally seen not as natural but as &amp;#039;social.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Does this mean that fatherhood was optional? This seems to say that women HAD to be mothers, and men could do whatever they wanted. I find it interesting that the distinctions seem to be broader and that in the world today, it is not uncommon for a woman to be seen doing something that only a &amp;#039;man&amp;#039; would only be allowed to do (and vice-versa) a hundred( and less) years ago. -Kristina &lt;br /&gt;
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== Leslie Alexander, “Rethinking the Position of Black Women in American Women’s History” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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Leslie Alexander’s essay “Rethinking the Position of Black Women in American Women’s History” does a great job explaining where Black women fit into Women’s Studies and feminism as a whole. What I found out was that Black women don’t fit in at all. When I think of the feminist movement I think of white, upper middle class women. And after reading Alexander’s essay, this is not surprising. Women’s studies have historically been modeled based on white women and have largely left out other categories such as race and class. This model does not work for Black women. Alexander argues that it is impossible to analyze Black women based solely on their gender, and any model that tries to do so will fail. This is because Black women have a culture in which they identify themselves with their community. Alexander goes on to argue the importance of grappling with issues such as race, culture, community, and class to further understand the lives of women. While discussing this flaw in Women&amp;#039;s Studies, Alexander pushes for scholars to analyze Black women “through their own eyes rather than through the lens of whiteness and oppression.&amp;quot; –Erin Sanderson&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree that Black women do not fit into Women&amp;#039;s Studies. When I think of the feminist movement or even of the idea of women&amp;#039;s history, I also picture white upper middle class women. I always remember learning about women&amp;#039;s history, and then learning about African-American history, but the two never seemed to cross paths in lessons. I liked what Kate Haulman said in her essay, &amp;quot;A woman who self-identified as Chinese American...was not Chinese American four days out of the week and a woman the other three- she was always both.&amp;quot; I think that idea could be used in the case of Black women, and for women of all other races. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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If the reading is on a women in American History then I think it does fit in this article.  Black women are a part of American history no matter through a white person&amp;#039;s point of of view or what class status they had. I do agree that the feminist movement would have mostly been white upper middle class but I also think that black women and white women each had their own social classes.  I agree with Alexander that we should have scholars analyze the history of a black woman through their own eyes even though we know in the past that was not so easy. -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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In Leslie Alexander&amp;#039;s essay, I was interested in the comments made about black women and their role in women&amp;#039;s history. I had never really given much thought to the idea, but realized after reading that they do not appear to be a huge part in women&amp;#039;s history; historians and people interested in history may just assume that this group of women are included butit may be important to have a bit more focus. Historians may want to homogenize them but in reality they do have a separate history to that of white women.  -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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Traditionally, the women’s rights movement discriminated against women of different races and classes. While I think Alexander makes a very important point that feminism has excluded many people, I wonder if she has overexaggerated or simplified African American women’s ambivalence towards the women’s rights movement. Alexander stated that feminism has had a “gender first” requirement. I personally know more about earlier feminism, such as the fight for suffrage, rather than later feminism, but I think one can make an argument that much of at least earlier feminism was “class first” rather than “gender first.” -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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In agreement, I do say that traditionally I think most people think of American Women&amp;#039;s History as an upper (maybe at time middle) class white subject.  However, the problem lies in the fact that while there may be documentation (primary sources) on these white women due to their education and status levels, one might be hard-pressed to find the much lacking resources on Black women in history. For example, you may find plenty of information into the lives of a wealthy white woman plantation owner&amp;#039;s wife, but you are not going to have the same time looking up her main house slave. I do believe the work should be done on elaborating American Women&amp;#039;s History, it just seems that it would be a difficult task to take on. - Christine Leckner&lt;br /&gt;
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The Castañeda and Alexander readings examine contributions women of different ethnic/racial backgrounds have made to the women’s studies field outside of the traditional and dominate women’s liberation, white middle-class approach taken by most scholars. These historians have challenged overlooking race and class as an influence on women, as well as the idea of looking at women of color as little more than doubly oppressed victims. However, I feel that Leslie Alexander does a little of what she accuses other scholars of women’s history of doing: generalizing women’s experiences. She argues that “although feminism is a useful paradigm for White women, the attempt to force Black women into the same interpretive model in not applicable, and has prevented full understanding of Black women’s lives [19].” The feminism she seems to be describing is very much based in white middle-class ideology, so it’s just as inaccurate to try to fit &amp;#039;&amp;#039;all&amp;#039;&amp;#039; White women into this paradigm as it is to try to fit Black women into it. I would’ve liked to have seen a &amp;#039;&amp;#039;small&amp;#039;&amp;#039; acknowledgment of the complexities and cultural differences that exist not just between women of different races, but also between women of the same race, both Black and White. --Taylor Brann&lt;br /&gt;
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I agree with many of the other students that in the past when I have studied women’s history or the Women’s Rights Movement I think about White middle class women.  I feel that Leslie Alexander does a good job at identifying many of the reasons behind why Black women have a hard time connecting with the “womanhood/ sisterhood” that is popular in Women’s history studied by White female scholars.-- Erin Glennon&lt;br /&gt;
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== Antonia Castañeda’s“Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History” ==&lt;br /&gt;
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The last sentence of this essay sums up her argument well. &amp;quot;The study of women of color requires us to reexamine, challenge, and change those structures. Only then will we decolonize western history.&amp;quot; Castañeda points out how women&amp;#039;s history can easily fall into the same error as &amp;quot;traditional&amp;quot; history does by focusing on one specific sub-group within women&amp;#039;s history, in this case middle-class white women. Studying women of color places the historian at intersect that challenges both gender and racial studies.&lt;br /&gt;
I also wonder how many presumptions we make about western history because of white European influence. I love this notion of &amp;quot;decolonizing&amp;quot; western history and Castañeda only can begin to touch on some of the issues. How entrenched is our history in this &amp;quot;colonized&amp;quot; thinking?&lt;br /&gt;
--[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 19:48, 26 August 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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I believe that Castañeda brings out some very interesting and thought-provoking ideas in her essay about the struggle against both gender and race discrimination in history. However, I would have liked her to be more clear about who she includes and does not include when she says &amp;quot;women of color.&amp;quot; Additionally, I would have liked her to also clarify who she means when she says &amp;quot;white.&amp;quot; There are many European countries from which women in America have ancestry. I found it a bit hypocritical that a person writing about the need for history to include the lives of &amp;quot;women of color&amp;quot; more fairly, would continuously clump all &amp;quot;women of non-color&amp;quot; into one generlized category of &amp;quot;white.&amp;quot; --[[User:Mturner|Mturner]] 20:02, 26 August 2009 (MDT)-Mary Turner&lt;br /&gt;
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My favorite point that Castaneda made was that “women of all races, classes, and cultures are active subjects, not passive objects or victims of the historical process.” (18) I think it is vital task for historians to search for the agency women possessed, even if men attempted to keep women “powerless.” -Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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I found Castañeda’s comment interesting about studying the west (west being defined as a mobile line beginning with European expansion into the eastern coast of the Americas through all periods of settling and expanding towards the opposite coast of California and Alaska) with a focus on women of color to understand how they used their own culture and knowledge of how the world worked to put in to context the changes happening during colonization.  I think it is a neat idea to research how they themselves perceived the changes and how they saw themselves as active participants rather than addressing western expansion through a male point of view in which women were often written about in passive roles. This viewpoint would add incredible knowledge to our understanding on the effects of colonization and expansion within American Studies. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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== Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot; ==&lt;br /&gt;
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I found many interesting ideas in Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot;. When she discussed the work versus family dichotomy, she mentioned that women have always worked. For many women, their family was their work. However, since they were not employed outside the home, or even compensated for their hard work, these women were not considered to be &amp;quot;workers&amp;quot;. I like the term &amp;quot;paid versus unpaid work&amp;quot; better. -Katelyn Lease&lt;br /&gt;
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I think the part in this essay that really struck me was when Bock discusses &amp;quot;Work versus family.&amp;quot; Personally, I don&amp;#039;t understand the significance of re-labeling the roles that women, or men for that matter play at home. Family life is seperate from career work, and in my opinion should not constitute being called &amp;quot;work.&amp;quot; Bock also mentions that the opposition to the &amp;quot;work versus family&amp;quot; issue is linked to low-paying jobs for women. Maybe I am misunderstanding her point, but is she suggesting that women should be compensated for housework, or perhaps that because women typically take on housework--they have handicapped themselves in the workplace, even in jobs that aren&amp;#039;t related to domestic work? Also, I think that the term &amp;quot;working mother&amp;quot; is reserved for women working outside the home because there is a stigma on women who demand that their responsibilities as a mother be considered &amp;quot;work.&amp;quot; It makes it seem as though they think their children and home are equivalent to a job and workplace, which is not usually an accepted concept in American society.---[[User:Mturner|Mturner]] 20:02, 26 August 2009 (MDT)Mary Turner&lt;br /&gt;
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The piece on &amp;quot;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History,&amp;quot; I found most interesting.  There are obvious gender difference such as women can have babies and men cannot.  But it is interesting because the roles of women and men have changed.  I think that each individual is different and their expectations change for themselves and how they are viewed by those around them like family and society as a whole.  -Marsha Himes&lt;br /&gt;
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In &amp;quot;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;quot; Gisela Block writes about nature verses culture. I found it interesting that the activities of men were considered cultural and activities of women were natural. &amp;quot;Nature&amp;quot; in the context it was used undervalues the work women did. It just shows how far women have come since the 1970&amp;#039;s. -LeAnn Taggart&lt;br /&gt;
:I too found this point on nature vs culture fascinating. It makes me wonder what else in history we view through a distorted lens because we see certain things as nature and others as culture? Or if we take a look at the other dichotomies that Bock uses how could they be applied to other areas of study? --[[User:Shauser|Shauser]] 20:08, 26 August 2009 (MDT)&lt;br /&gt;
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Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s essay made me realize how intricate the study of women&amp;#039;s history really is. Men and women are different in many ways including &amp;quot;working&amp;quot; at home or at the office and whether taking care of the family is considered work. The terms &amp;quot;sex&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;gender&amp;quot; are also scrutinized for one relates more to motherhood and being able to give birth than the other. I thought the dichotomies and the essay were interesting.   -Amy Van Ness&lt;br /&gt;
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The sex versus gender and the equality verses difference brought up some good and points about how women are looked at historically.  I do see the difficulties of seperating biological and cultural difference and I think it is best not to seperate them too much since tey both influence one another.  -John Rowley&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the essay about Women of Color and the rewriting of Western History very interesting for a couple of reasons.  I thought that women of all races collaborated with one another during the Women’s movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  As  Castandeda states there were two different movements one being the women’s liberation movement and the second one being the third-world liberation movements.  Women of color had a more difficult time obtaining equal rights than white middle class women because not only did they have to deal with the question of gender but also with race. -Nick Jesionka&lt;br /&gt;
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Gisela Bock&amp;#039;s essay, &amp;#039;&amp;#039;Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History&amp;#039;&amp;#039; was fascinating for a few reasons. First of all, she begins her thesis by reminding us that the reason that Women&amp;#039;s History is rendered visible is fundamentally due to subjection. This was a thought provoking statement because all American minority history begins with exploitation or subjection so I was quite intrigued. Bock&amp;#039;s essay differed from Kate Haulman&amp;#039;s in its use of definitions and the words that she chose to focus on. Mainly, her attention to Gender VS. Sex or biology. I found it interesting that her Equality Vs. Difference section tied directly into further examination of Sex vs Gender. It seemed ironic that in the battle for gender equality, in the public, private, and scholarly arena, Women&amp;#039;s Studies runs the risk of becoming invisible yet again by &amp;quot;mainstreaming&amp;quot; because it has been turned into an amalgamation of Gender Studies. This in turn could characterize the word Woman as biological leaving it historically irrelevant. One would hope that Women&amp;#039;s Studies does indeed receive the autonomy and examination that it truly deserves while exploring and remembering that both genders live and work reflexively with each other and thus influence each other immensely. - Caryn Levine&lt;br /&gt;
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I found the dichotomies presented in Gisela Bock’s essay, “ Challenging Dichotomies in Women’s History,” to be very interesting.  One of the dichotomies that I found to be interesting in the essay was nature vs. culture, I thought it was fascinating how the role of motherhood and fatherhood are labeled two different ways, with the role that women take in the bearing and raising of children being “natural” and the role of men being labeled as “social”. -- Erin Glennon&lt;br /&gt;
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I did like that the author of this article has thought about the theories common within gender studies such as the separation of gender and sex.  However I think that her overall outcome has been limited by western thought and has therefore not succeeded in understanding gender on the larger scale. Her narrow assumption that women are inferior to men is invalidated in many non western societies where men and women are viewed as equal in value, cooperating in different forms (occupations, art, religious functions) to create a unified spirit of Male and Female, interdependent and interconnected (the same idea as yin and yang) such as is with, among others, the Navajo. Her political objective is very clear within this document and I believe it skews her understanding of gender studies as a whole. She  automatically asserts her western notion of sexual hierarchy on all subjects of gender, of which I disagree that they (sex and gender) are interchangeable as proven by persons of gender fluidity or transition such as the Native American transgender, the two spirit (Berdaché), or the Indian Hijra . While I understand this class is on early American Women, I think it’s important that we understand that all societies do not think the same way ours does and that to study other cultures, such as the American Indians, we ought to look at what they define as female and or woman and not assert our own agendas or ideas upon them. -- Elyse Lawrence&lt;br /&gt;
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I was intrigued by Bock’s discussion of the dichotomy of integration versus autonomy. I like the term “gender studies” because I believe women’s history should not be a completely autonomous field. Is it ever really possible to be separate but equal? &lt;br /&gt;
-Allison Luthern&lt;br /&gt;
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Blocks essay on Challenging Dichotomies in Women&amp;#039;s History had a lot of different points to make on the study of womens history in society. I especially liked the section on work vs. family. I found this to be a dichotomy that is still prevalent in todays society. The idea of being a &amp;quot;stay at home mother&amp;quot; is a very popular choice yet can be looked down upon by others for not being a real job. The concept of &amp;quot;mens leisure as womens work&amp;quot; was interesting and still relevant in my opinion. and reminiscent of the traditional roles we still put men and women in today. Even women who work outside the home have the tendency to look down upon women who in their minds maintain the traditional roles of women and work inside the home. The concepts of work and unpaid work are definitely something that are still an important aspect in the history of women in the workplace. As of right now I find that women who choose to stay home are often regarded as more traditional by todays society. --Emma Peck&lt;/div&gt;</summary>
		<author><name>Epeck</name></author>	</entry>

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